A Danish city is now tracking its homeless citizens via GPS. Allotting trackers to un-housed locals as part of a pilot program, Denmark’s third-largest city of Odense will now know exactly where they go, how they get there, and how long they stay.
It sounds intrusive, even dystopian, doesn’t it? Believe it or not, the thinking behind the plan is actually very positive and benign. Odense is gathering the information not to find ways to exclude the homeless, but to work out how it can make the city a better place for them to live in. By tracking where and when homeless people congregate, Odense can choose the best locations for benches and services such as coffee rooms and shelters provided by the municipality. Rather than using the police to force the homeless away from public sites, the city can instead bring services to them where they already are, encouraging full use of them and avoiding pointless, dehumanizing stand-offs.
[For more of this story, written by Feargus O'Sullivan, go to http://www.citylab.com/cityfix...the-homeless/380516/]
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