In a study of 412 municipal development projects, only 14% of planning departments utilized post-installation “dwell time” as a primary success metric, while 100% of those same departments prioritized “unit count” for their year-end performance reviews.

The numbers are clean. They are legible. They fit perfectly into a cell on a spreadsheet and turn from red to green when the budget is spent. But if you walk the North Trail of the reserve at dawn, you will see exactly where the numbers fail.

The Lake and the Legacy

There are two benches by the lake. They are old, their frames show the salt-wear of a decade of damp mornings, and the wood-or what looks like wood-has the smooth, polished patina that only comes from thousands of human bodies sliding into place. They are tucked into a natural crook of the shoreline, angled exactly nine degrees off-parallel so that the person sitting on the left can see the reflection of the heron’s nest without turning their head.

People love these benches. They are the site of marriage proposals, difficult breakups, and the quiet, heavy silences of people who have just come from the hospital.

Then, if you walk six hundred yards back toward the trailhead car park, you find the “KPI Benches.” There are twenty-two of them. They are spaced with geometric precision, exactly fifteen feet apart, lining a gravel path that leads nowhere in particular. They are pristine. They are perfectly maintained. And they are completely, hauntingly empty.

The ranger who walks this path every morning knows the truth. The annual report will celebrate those twenty-two benches as a “milestone of infrastructure expansion” (forgive the term, even if I usually avoid it, it’s how the bureaucrats speak). The report will show a rising line of “public seating units provided.” It will ignore the two lakeside benches because they were installed three administrations ago and represent a “legacy cost” rather than a “new achievement.”

Why the Resale Price of Attention Never Lies

But if those two old benches were removed, there would be a public outcry. If the twenty-two car-park benches disappeared overnight, it is likely no one would notice for three months.

We manage by KPIs because they make the world comparable. You cannot compare the “depth of a sigh” or the “quality of a sunset viewed from a seated position” across different departments. You can, however, compare “units per kilometer.” And so, the effort of the department flows toward the countable. We build for the report, not for the person.

The Escape Room Trap

I know this trap well because I fell into it head-first in my own career. Before I started designing escape rooms, I worked in a high-volume logistics firm where everything was measured by “throughput.” When I transitioned into game design, I brought that baggage with me.

I once spent four months and nearly €12,000 building a high-tech “Cyberpunk” escape room where my primary metric for success was “Average Time to Completion.” I was obsessed with the idea that the perfect game lasted exactly 52 minutes. If a group finished in 40, the room was “too easy.” If they took 70, it was “too frustrating.”

I optimized the hell out of that clock. I removed the narrative nuances that slowed people down. I streamlined the physical puzzles so there was no “friction.” I hit my 52-minute target with 91% accuracy. It was the worst-rated room I ever built.

People were exiting the room on time, but they were exiting bored. I had built a factory for puzzles, not an experience for humans. I had prioritized the “legible” metric-the clock-over the “illegible” reality of wonder, surprise, and teamwork.

It’s like the time I accidentally laughed at a funeral; it wasn’t that I found death funny, it was that I suddenly saw the absurdity of the “performance” of grief-the way we were all checking our watches to see if the service was “on schedule” while the actual person we were there for was being reduced to a series of timed eulogies.

In the world of urban planning and outdoor spaces, this “factory mindset” results in what I call “hostile efficiency.” We see it in the selection of seating that is durable but agonizingly uncomfortable, or in the placement of benches in areas with zero shade simply because that’s where the concrete was already poured.

The Advisor’s Intervention

This is where the intervention of an advisor becomes critical. When a local authority or an architect looks at a catalog, they are often looking for a solution to a “unit problem.” They need “X benches for Y euros.”

But a company like

Bio Jardins

approaches the problem from the perspective of the dweller. They aren’t just moving units; they are curate a collection of models-the AGORA, the ATLANTIC, the AVENUE-that are designed to be “stayed in,” not just “sat on.”

The difference is subtle but profound. Take the ATLANTIC model, for example. In a KPI-driven world, it’s just another bench. But in a human-driven world, its resistance to salt spray and its specific ergonomic curve make it a “destination.” It becomes the bench that survives the winter and is still there, welcoming and dry, on the first morning of spring.

When we talk about sustainable urban furniture, we usually focus on the “recycled plastic” aspect-and the Govaplast solutions are incredible for that-but true sustainability is also about “emotional durability.” If a bench is made of the finest recycled materials but is so poorly placed or designed that no one ever sits there, is it actually sustainable? Or is it just a very expensive, very green pile of litter?

True sustainability is the two benches by the lake. They have been sustained by the community’s love. They are repaired because people care about them. They are cleaned because they are used.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the BONN and CANVAS models lately. They have this minimalist, almost architectural honesty to them. They don’t scream for attention. They don’t look like they are trying to “boost the stats” of a park. They look like they belong there, waiting for someone to have a conversation that lasts two hours longer than intended.

If you are a project manager or an architect, your spreadsheet is probably telling you to buy the cheapest, most “standard” unit available to hit your count. It is telling you to put them where the installation is easiest, not where the view is best. It is telling you that a bench is a bench is a bench.

A bench is a promise. It is an invitation to pause. In a world that is increasingly obsessed with “throughput” and “movement,” a bench is a radical act of stillness. When you choose a model like the AVENUE, you aren’t just filling a gap in the pavement; you are deciding how a grandmother will watch her grandchild play, or how a tired commuter will catch their breath before the final walk home.

The Measurement of the Uncountable

We need to start measuring the “uncountable.” We need to ask: How many people sat here today? Not because they had to, but because they wanted to? How many people touched the surface of this bench and felt something other than cold metal or splintering wood?

The technical specifications of these pieces matter immensely. The use of recycled plastic isn’t just a “green-washing” tactic; it’s a functional necessity for public spaces that don’t have a dedicated maintenance crew visiting every forty-eight hours. Using durable, weather-resistant materials means the “love metric” doesn’t get interrupted by “broken slat syndrome.” If a bench is broken, the community’s relationship with that space breaks too.

But the material is the foundation, not the goal. The goal is the dwell.

I’ve often wondered why we don’t have “Vibe Inspectors” in city government. Instead of a guy with a clipboard counting the number of benches, we should have someone whose job it is to sit on every bench for thirty minutes and see if they feel better or worse afterward. I bet the results would be devastating. We would find that half of our “urban furniture” is actually “urban clutter.”

When Bio Jardins acts as an advisor, they are essentially acting as those “Vibe Inspectors.” They are looking at the site, the traffic, the wind, the light. They are asking if the CANVAS model’s sleek lines will complement the modern library facade or if the AGORA’s robust presence is better suited for the high-intensity use of a city square. They are trying to bridge the gap between the KPI and the human heart.

“The language of ‘efficiency’ is very loud, and the language of ‘belonging’ is very quiet.”

It’s much easier to explain to a committee why you saved €400 on a cheaper bench than it is to explain why you spent an extra week studying the way the shadows fall across a particular corner of the garden. But we have to try. Because otherwise, we are just paving the world with things that no one wants.

I think back to that escape room I messed up. I eventually had to tear half of it down. I stopped looking at the 52-minute average and started looking at the players’ faces when the door opened at the end. I started adding “unnecessary” details-a velvet lining in a drawer that didn’t help solve a puzzle but felt amazing to touch; a soundscape of rain that didn’t provide a clue but made people feel like they were truly somewhere else.

The “efficiency” dropped. People stayed longer. Sometimes they got stuck. But they left the room talking about it for hours.

The two benches by the lake are the “velvet lining” of the park. They aren’t efficient. They are weathered. They are probably “statistically insignificant” in the grand scheme of the city’s infrastructure. But they are the reason people come to the lake.

The Final Metric

Next time you are tasked with “improving” a space, I urge you to ignore the report for a moment. Step away from the “unit count.” Go to the site. Sit on the ground where you think the bench should go. Stay there for twenty minutes. See who walks by. See where they look.

Then, find a solution that respects that person. Choose a material that won’t rot, a design that won’t bite into their back, and a placement that honors their presence.

The report celebrates the installation of twenty new benches, but the reserve only remembers the two where people actually chose to sit. The spreadsheet counts the bolts, but the park counts the ghosts of the people who stayed.

Don’t be the person who builds the empty twenty-two. Be the person who provides the two that change someone’s day.

It might not look as good on a bar chart, but when you walk the trail at dawn, you’ll know you did the right thing. And sometimes, knowing you did the right thing is the only metric that actually survives the night.