> public square in front of city hall is patrolled by police Yeah, I wrote this in a comment a couple days ago: "public spaces are treated like private spaces

> public square in front of city hall is patrolled by police Yeah, I wrote this in a comment a couple days ago: "public spaces are treated like private spaces by local governments: "we don't want problems in our land" is the default attitude". Improving public spaces means solving these kinds of problems. Streets are not accessible to social interaction. As Ivan Illich wrote: "police protection [is mistaken] for safety, military poise for national security [...]". So yes, everything is a private space, very disappointingly. Then we complain about kids getting addicted to videogames. What else did we leave to them? If we take away public spaces and try to structure all their time with extracurricular activities and whatever. Parks are nice to walk through, but rarely stay and do something. You usually want a roof, power sockets and light, somewhere decent to sit, etc. But we are sadly more into hostile architecture [0]. About reimagined libraries... the combination of bookshelves, the layout of the corridors and the silence really create a mystical space, something quite unique. Like the architecture of some cathedrals. I'm very in favor of unique spaces, and we shouldn't understimate silence either. Libraries can easily inspire us and give us this feeling that there are so many unexplored paths that we can explore... it's a whole adventure, if you are into that kind of adventures. But there are a million other options to create new unique spaces and adventures, I don't think we need to reimagine libraries to monopolize all those possibilities. Books, corridors and silence seem just fine to me for libraries. We can put computers and internet access somewhere else. That's why I think it's interesting to just focus on public spaces. People is very different and they will enjoy very different spaces. For example, a library for kids could be completely different to a library for adults. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_architecture