"A New Organization of Social Space"

Aside from the comically heaping servings of unnecessarily dense, nonsensical Landscape Urbanese word salad contained in this article, it's good to have some hope that we will soon widely begin to make our way out of the dark ages of public benches and other such amenities.

These “more ergonomic” benches allow for “multiple functions, like stretching, playing, and lounging.” These new functions are only made possible through a revolution in design practices, like 3D modeling and fabrication.

Well, not really.  Benches and other such street, park and transportation facility furniture certainly existed in comfortable forms long before the 'design them to be as painful as possible in order so that the homeless can't sleep on them' era.  It's a seat, not rocket science.

I have greatly enjoyed such 'advanced' public furniture when I've come across it, in particular, if I recall, at the beautiful Tanner Springs Park in NW Portland, Oregon, but not everything needs to be so complicated or costly.  For now, I would just be happy to have SEPTA or the city provide (or allow a private entity to provide in return for publicity - advertising on benches, okay;  bus and train wraps, NOT okay) the occasional bench which wasn't, literally, a pain-in-the-ass to sit on for ten minutes while waiting for a bus.