How Ethical is Defensive Architecture?

As cities across the United States struggle to address their rising population of homelessness, the use and advent of defensive architecture, or “Hostile Architecture” is being implemented into the urban fabric as a solution to quell the growing encampments. Oftentimes this type of architecture goes unnoticed by the public, but for those left on the street, a simple metal bar running in the middle of a bench can become the difference between having a dry place to sleep at night, thus raising questions of ethicality for these types of interventions. Are defensive architectural features truly an effective solution or are they a temporary fix, that just moves the problem down the road? 

In the Guardian article Anti-homeless spikes: ‘Sleeping rough opened my eyes to the city’s barbed cruelty’, author Alex Andreou argues that hostile architecture is not only an ineffective means but enforces the negative stereotypes the general public often hold towards the homeless, quoting, “Defensive architecture acts as the airplane curtain that separates economy from business and business from first-class, protecting those further forward from the envious eyes of those behind”. In certain cases, the author claims that the defensive measures have even hurt and maimed certain individuals, claiming that a homeless man was killed by falling on iron spikes placed on a retaining wall, aimed at keeping people from sleeping alongside the stonework. 

The effectiveness of defensive architecture is only felt in the immediate timeline, the measures make no promise for lasting or long-term solutions that would genuinely help people in need find shelter or aid, it merely moves them out from loitering around a business. Andreou claims that defensive architecture is far more insidious than we may think as the act of designing something to cause discomfort or pain has sadistic undertones that only make our cities uglier for everyone, not just the population they are aimed at deterring. These objects come in all shapes and sizes, some far more aggressive than others. By now most Oregon residents have become privy to the large rocks placed under freeway bridges, or perhaps we have seen metal studs placed along a wall that could easily be sat on. All of these “solutions” are what the author believes to be a physical manifestation of corporate distaste for poverty, by engineering an inherent distaste for the less fortunate into our urban landscapes.

While it remains a heavily debated issue, one can see this less as a solution to creating lasting change in our national homelessness, but merely as a deterrent to keep people from publicly urinating on the streets, or trying to get a safe, dry place to sleep at night. Perhaps a better solution to public urination would best be addressed through more available public restrooms, and greater investments from the cities on their available shelters, given that those measures have the potential to help people, rather than clear them out of a specific area. 

- Mason Martinez