What’s one thing that would instantly improve your city?

One Bench

Ask people this question and the answers arrive almost pre-written: more civic sense, more kindness, more respect for public spaces, less indifference.

Noble answers, all of them.

I want to argue for something smaller.

The one thing that would improve my city is not better people.

It is a bench.

1. The honest answer is smaller than the noble one.

A bench in the shade. A working tap beside it. A footpath nobody has parked a vehicle across.

That is the whole proposal.

It sounds too modest to be serious, which is exactly why it is worth defending.

Cities are often improved through grand plans, major projects and ambitious promises. But sometimes the most meaningful improvement begins with something ordinary: giving people a place to sit.

2. You cannot install kindness.

Nothing in my experience in life suggests otherwise.

Character has never been successfully issued as a circular.

You can prohibit, penalise and prescribe. You can establish standards and impose duties. But no legal instrument can simply order strangers to become gentler with one another.

Every essay that asks a city to be kinder risks asking for a result without identifying the conditions that might make that result easier.

3. But you can create conditions in which kindness becomes possible.

A place to sit is a place to wait, to rest, to talk, to let an older person catch their breath.

People rarely meet when they are given nowhere to stay awhile.

A city with no place to stop forces everyone to keep moving. And when everyone is constantly moving, there are fewer opportunities to notice one another.

Indifference is not always a moral failure.

Sometimes it is a design failure.

Good public spaces do not manufacture virtue. They can, however, make ordinary acts of consideration easier.

4. Civic life has often depended on shared places.

This is not an entirely new idea.

Traditional Tamil houses often included a thinnai—a raised platform or verandah near the entrance—that created a transition between the home and the street. It could serve as a place for conversation, hospitality, rest and everyday social interaction. 

The Silappathikaram, attributed to Ilango Adigal, also gives detailed descriptions of Puhar, including its streets, markets and commercial life. The text offers a picture of an urban world in which movement, trade and social activity were closely connected.

Across South Asia, the Jataka stories include episodes involving wells, water and the provision of water to travellers or animals, sometimes explicitly connected with generosity and the earning of merit. 

In Islamic societies, the sabil developed as a public water fountain, providing water to passersby. Such fountains could be supported through charitable endowments (waqf), making access to water an organised form of public service. 

And in ancient Greece, the stoa—a covered walkway or colonnade, often associated with the agora—provided shelter and space for movement, commerce and public activity. The Athenian Agora itself was a major centre of political, judicial, commercial, social and cultural life. 

The details differ across cultures and centuries.

But the recurring principle is familiar:

Shared life needs shared spaces.

People cannot build community entirely through exhortation. They need somewhere to encounter one another.

5. Small hardware can accomplish what large projects sometimes overlook.

A flyover moves vehicles.

It may improve traffic flow. It may be essential infrastructure.

But it does not, by itself, create a place where neighbours meet.

A bench does something different.

It gives a pedestrian a reason to stop.

It gives an older person somewhere to rest.

It gives a parent somewhere to wait with a child.

It gives a delivery worker a moment to recover.

It gives two strangers the possibility of becoming two people who have noticed each other.

The bench is small.

Its social function is not.

6. Ask who is excluded when there is nowhere to sit.

The old.

Pregnant women.

People with disabilities or limited mobility.

Day labourers between shifts.

Delivery workers.

Anyone who spends much of the day on foot.

A city without adequate places to sit sends a subtle message:

You may pass through here, but you may not stay.

That is more than an inconvenience.

Public space becomes less public when some people can comfortably occupy it while others are effectively told to keep moving.

The absence of a bench can therefore become a quiet form of exclusion—especially for people who have the fewest alternatives.

7. The obvious objection is a fair one.

Benches get broken.

Taps run dry.

Shelters become neglected.

A space created for public use can be appropriated, damaged or left to decay.

And yes, the hardware still needs civic responsibility.

But the order matters.

Begin with the sermon and it may be forgotten by evening.

Begin with the bench and it teaches something every day, wordlessly, to everyone who uses it.

It does not make people virtuous.

It simply makes a small act of civic life possible.

Maintaining something is a far smaller ask of a city than transforming human character.

8. Finally, the word in the question.

Instantly.

It is usually read as a figure of speech.

Take it literally and it becomes a test.

More empathy. More responsibility. More neighbourliness.

None of these arrives instantly. If they arrive at all, they usually develop slowly, through families, institutions, habits and generations.

A bench is different.

It can be installed in the morning and occupied that same day.

There is another kind of “instant improvement” that cities already know well, and I do not mean that.

Paint before an inspection.

A cleared pavement before a VIP visit.

A temporary cleanup before an important event.

Those are improvements with the lifespan of a photograph.

The real test is what remains on Wednesday.

Cosmetic speed disappears.

A bench stays.

It keeps working.

And it requires no prior change in human behaviour before someone can use it.

So the answer is not that my city needs better people.

It is that my city may need to recover something it once understood:

People need places to pause before they can begin to notice one another.

Perhaps that is what a good city does.

It does not make us better by decree.

It quietly creates more opportunities for us to behave better.

And sometimes, the first step is simply giving people somewhere to sit down together and discover what they have in common.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 14 September 2026

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