What is Hostile Architecture? America's War on the Unhoused

Isn't it strange how, in a country where most people live paycheck to paycheck and cannot afford a $500 expense, the general culture is so unfriendly toward unhoused people? Even though half of Americans struggle to afford rent or their mortgage payment, we often fail to empathize with those who are visibly struggling. Call it the myth of meritocracy, manifesting, or prosperity gospel; we relate more to people with money than to people without—even though we may be one or two unplanned expenses away from homelessness ourselves.

Let’s clear up some common misconceptions. People experiencing homelessness may sleep at emergency shelters, in a vehicle, at a friend's house, or in a tent. And while organizations define it differently, most acknowledge there is a spectrum between housing instability and houselessness. Lastly, in popular culture, mental illness and substance abuse disorders are framed as the major drivers of homelessness; however, the reality is that many people simply cannot afford stable housing. When rent goes up in urban areas, the homeless population also increases.

What are policymakers doing with this information? Some local and state governments are attempting to criminalize homelessness by prohibiting activities like sleeping, camping, eating, sitting, or asking for money and resources in public spaces—punishable by citations, fines and even jail time.

Recently, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill banning the unhoused from sleeping in public spaces other than designated government approved camps away from commercial and residential areas. Grants Pass, Oregon, is at the center of a court case that could have widespread implications for homelessness policy nationwide, as the city says civil and criminal punishments are "necessary" to enforce laws banning homeless people from public spaces. 

These efforts and others like it all point to one conclusion: America is waging war on its visible homeless population. This sentiment trickles down into nearly every facet of society, including how public spaces are constructed, leading to the implementation of something called hostile architecture.

Hostile architecture, also known as defensive architecture or exclusionary design, uses urban design to restrict or modify behavior. It often targets the unhoused community through design choices that intentionally maximize physical discomfort and encourage passersby to keep it moving. 

You’ve probably noticed these designs popping up in your city or neighborhood, making once-welcoming parks, benches, and sidewalks less inviting or downright hostile. Here are five things you should know about hostile architecture.

Bolts installed on the front steps of a building to discourage sitting and sleeping. Credit: Wikipedia.

Hostile Architecture Can Take Many Forms

Hostile architecture may look like spikes on window sills, public parks with fences so high they resemble prisons or the removal of trees, resulting in little to no protection from the elements. 

It also looks like arm rests in the middle of park benches (to prevent people from lying down on them), locked park gates, or bright lighting in subway alcoves (to make it impossible to sleep). 

Sometimes, it’s even trickier to spot—for example, businesses that place large planters with beautiful flowers in doorways or concrete posts along walls where unhoused people once sought shelter from the rain and snow.

In Seattle, Washington, the Department of Transportation placed bike racks under an overpass. At first glance, it seemed like a positive addition, but on further inspection, it was an odd place to park a bike, meaning there was little need for a bike rack at that location. It seemed like their actual function was to prevent unhoused people from lying down or camping underneath the bridge. 

The DOT eventually removed the bike racks due to public backlash, but their existence and other applications of hostile architecture reflect the insidious nature of these designs. The use of otherwise normal or even beneficial infrastructure can be applied for ulterior motives to restrict public spaces from specific groups of people.

Due to this, hostile architecture is often overlooked, and therefore hard to spot.

Anti-homeless public benches in Central Park. Photo credit: SJ Obijo

Spikes to prevent sitting in a public area at the rapid-transit Court Square IND Crosstown station, One Court Square Plaza, Long Island City, Queens. Photo credit: Creative Commons

Hostile Architecture Can Be Hard to See or Notice 

When was the last time you had to think about finding a safe place outdoors to sleep? Hostile architecture eliminates potential answers to these questions. As these things don't affect most people, hostile architecture may also go unnoticed. 

People don't necessarily "see" something like extremely harsh lighting, although they instinctively know they don't want to remain in that space for long. They may not notice a lack of benches, but they know they should avoid certain areas, or they will tire trying to walk back. They may have seen metal spikes on a window sill and assumed they were meant to deter animals—not to prevent people from using the ledge as a seat. These are examples of hostile architecture that are often overlooked.

Anti-homeless spikes in New York, designed to prevent sitting. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Design, whether we realize it or not, has a profound influence on our behaviors. It's not hard to see how hostile architecture, with its subtle yet powerful messages of exclusion, can lead people to avoid public spaces where they don't feel welcome, even when they don't completely understand why or what is causing that feeling.

It uses design to reinforce structural inequality.

Boulders installed along a freeway ramp in Portland, Oregon as a hostile architecture to deter temporary settlements. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Hostile Architecture Can Reinforce Existing Inequity

Many places in the United States are still being affected by the original red lines drawn during the Jim Crow era. With these preexisting inequities in place, urban design decisions utilizing hostile architecture can fall along these same lines.

Public spaces should be used for public good, but this often gets skewed by racism. For example, in Atlanta in the 1970s, a proposed extension of the MARTA subway lines to the suburbs was a point of contention for the typically white suburbanites who did not want Black urban dwellers to have access to these areas.

This is an example of how NIMBYism, segregation, and other forms of bigotry by people who have the time and political capital to push back against city planners and advocate for exclusionary designs. 

Hostile architecture doesn’t just reinforce inequality by attempting to ‘punish’ a specific group and remove them from public life, it impacts everyone by making public places less inviting.

Hostile Architecture Hurts Everyone

Hostile architecture affects those experiencing homelessness most apparently, but in reality, it affects everyone.

We are all affected by city planners and urban designers' war on homelessness—some of us more than others. Some of us can retreat to the comfort of private residences, private transportation, and members-only third places. For everyone else, hostile architecture makes public spaces less and less inviting.

The key to a thriving public space lies in its ability to provide protection and comfort for all, not just a select few.

Spikes on a ledge in Boston to prevent sleeping or sitting. Credit: Wikipedia

The anti-homeless bench in your local park that no one can sleep on? Chances are, it was also designed to discourage sitting for long periods of time. So people walking in the park have fewer options to rest, relax or socialize. That makes the park less inviting for unhoused community members, but also for pregnant people, children, senior adults and mobility aid users with access to stable housing.

Maybe the nearby plaza, metro station or train station went one step further and removed all of the public benches? Now, no one has a place to gather. Another third place lost to deliberate design choices. All are harmed even if all community members are not harmed equally.

Lack of shade, shelter or benches at the bus stop? Maybe that doesn’t impact your daily drive to work or the grocery store but it does impact residents who depend on bus transportation. Let's hope no one gets heat stroke or caught out in the rain or snow.

A lack of public restrooms on the boardwalk? This city beach doesn’t want unhoused people, families, or even nonresidents to visit, even though it’s technically open to all.

An attack on one marginalized group is an attack on all. Hostile architecture doesn’t make communities safer. It makes us complicit in the dehumanization of unhoused people while doing nothing to address factors that drive housing instability and homelessness.