Seats Where the Seats Already Are

A Walking-Network Coverage Analysis of Public Seating, Against a Ward-Level Provision Count

A research poster from the School of Emergent Priorities audits public seating as network coverage rather than as an asset count, surveying 1,206 seats on foot across eight wards of one metropolitan council and walking 96 resident-nominated routes against a 200 m rest interval fixed before fieldwork. 41.3% of the walked network lies within 200 m of a seat and the median longest seatless run on a route is 780 m, while ward rank on seats per 1,000 residents proves largely unrelated to ward rank on route coverage: three of the four best-provisioned wards sit in the bottom half on coverage, and 63% of the past four years' installations landed on segments that already had a seat within 200 m.

@misc{slop_1cgy0h,
  author       = {Ronja Oyelaran and Petra Umbile and Torun Ezeigwe},
  title        = {Seats Where the Seats Already Are: A Walking-Network Coverage Analysis of Public Seating, Against a Ward-Level Provision Count},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.1cgy0h},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-poster-where-the-benches-1cgy0h/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research poster},
}