
Hostile Architecture - eplanit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_architecture
======
DoreenMichele
Sometimes, locals decide to respond to the installation of hostile
architecture by "killing it with kindness," such as covering anti homeless
spikes with pillows and cushions. Here is one such article:

[https://archive.attn.com/stories/14655/manchester-england-
re...](https://archive.attn.com/stories/14655/manchester-england-residents-
throw-pillows-hostile-architecture)

I think most hostile architecture is basically an admission that "We don't
actually have a solution to our social problems, so we are resorting to a
beatings-will-continue-until-morale-improves model as an outward expression of
our incompetence."

That's my _charitable_ take. My uncharitable take is that a lot of people in
power don't care, have no heart and can't be arsed to pretend to care.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
> My uncharitable take is that a lot of people in power don't care, have no
> heart and can't be arsed to pretend to care.

Well, as someone who disagrees, but also likes to think I have a heart, I'll
give my 2c. Why don't we consider locks on your doors "hostile architecture"?
Social problems are complex and difficult to solve, and just because we
haven't solved them doesn't mean, for example, that people should be
discouraged from trying to prevent people from urinating on their property. I
mean, take one of the examples from the wikipedia article: Just because some
people have a drug problem doesn't mean blue lights in a public bathroom to
prevent IV drug use there is a bad thing.

Take homelessness. It is no coincidence that the cities that actually provide
the _most_ support and resources for the homeless actually have the worst
homeless problems. With the lack of a national policy to deal with
homelessness, providing better services does make your city a magnet for the
homeless population (this is NOT an argument against providing those services,
just a simple observation of cause and effect).[1] The fact that it would be
good to be able to sit at a city bus stop I think is a good thing even if
there are still homeless people in your city.

[1] [https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/homeless-buy-one-way-bus-
ti...](https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/homeless-buy-one-way-bus-tickets-to-
austin)

~~~
DoreenMichele
I spent years homeless.

A. Most services aimed at the homeless would be sued out of existence if they
were intended for middle class clientele. They are frequently quite terrible.

For example: At a free meal from the Salvation Army, an older woman sitting
next to me who had just gotten out of the hospital for a heart condition had
all her stuff stolen for complying with their crappy policy of leaving her
stuff in the unguarded designated area. It was cold and rainy that night and
she had just lost all her extra clothes and bedding.

They were giving away bedding and clothes after the meal. No one walked her to
the front of the line and said "Make sure she gets what she needs to make it
safely through the night."

B. I'm mostly not interested in seeing more homeless services. They are mostly
a "fuck you" solution.

If we actually cared about people in the US, we would have free national
health care and an appropriate housing supply. We have neither, then we blame
poor people as being _crazies_ and _junkies_ when they end up homeless.

Then we add insult to injury by giving them terrible food with long lines and
similar "services" for which we expect them to be ever so grateful.

I'm wholly unimpressed with the entire thing. The system is quite broken.

~~~
throwaway3627
Most homeless services here follow the "beggars can't be choosers" egotism of
not attending to people's actual needs but rather looking down their noses on
them, treating homeless people like criminals or make them jump through hoops
like show animals.

For example, most of the doctor specialist services here have a "full" waiting
list just to schedule an appointment and force people to call at a certain
time in the morning for a few spots on said list, like animals jockeying to
win the lottery.

Oh and the amount of food and cash aid is abysmal, not enough to feed or
clothe anyone.

Most services demand either employment or only apply to certain groups,
leaving many people to fall between the cracks.

The "social workers" are arrogant, obnoxious bureaucrats who don't listen to
their clients but instead hold their aid over their heads and order them
around without offering any solutions, strategies, resources or actual help...
just judgement and control.

And it takes _years_ to get disability status reviewed and longer to get
housing. There are at least 1500 people living rough and 500 people living in
vehicles in the area.

~~~
c22
I was out of work and _almost homeless_ (mostly extended couch-surfing) when
the Affordable Care Act went into effect so I signed up for one of the
subsidized low-income plans. They assigned me a primary care provider who was
two cities away and told me I would have to see them in order for my care to
be fully covered.

Later when I needed to see a doctor I dutifully made an appointment and rode
the bus one and a half hours out there only to learn that my assigned provider
was a pediatrician and she didn't feel comfortable taking me on as a patient.
I contacted the plan provider and they assigned me a new doctor, but when I
tried to make an appointment with him it turned out he was no longer
practicing medicine. Fortunately one of his colleagues was able to take me and
I finally received some care.

Three months later I was informed by his office that they were no longer in-
network with my plan because they had had too much difficulty getting them to
honor payments. I was assigned another primary care provider but thankfully I
got a job not long after that and I never experienced the thrill of
discovering whether the last one was a real living doctor or perhaps an
inanimate can of Dr. Pepper.

~~~
AstralStorm
Wow. Just excellent. This is done good journalism material for a stinger op.

On a less morbid note, while queues are slightly longer, nothing like that
happens in any of UK, Canada or any part of EU.

USA is the "have no money, get bent" kind of country it seems. Kinda ruins the
old American dream for everyone.

~~~
FearNotDaniel
On a more morbid note, it's a frightening picture of the kind of country our
current UK regime wants to create by leaving the EU at any cost and cosying up
to Trump's America. They won't be able to dismantle the NHS all in one go but
they'll certainly do everything they can to lower standards for all but the
elite.

~~~
thefounder
People voted Brexit like it or not so I think it's time to stop blaming the
government for trying to deliver the referendum result. Lies were told of
course but that's politics. Maybe investment and wages will increase and
people won't care that much about free NHS anymore, at least that's the way I
see it sold.

Either way EU will make a free trade deal(more or less limited) with the UK,
the only real issue with Brexit is the irish border.

------
gtirloni
Hostile architecture is usually focused on the local/micro, the area of
influence of the builder/owner.

Solving the actual problems in society that lead to hostile architecture is a
harder problem and the builder doesn't have complete control of that. A
builder can choose to donate to a charity that assists the homeless but that
doesn't mean people will stop peeing in their property.

Does anyone know of an organization that could collect money from lots of
builders/owners, apply some root cause analysis and try to solve the real
problems so private owners don't need to resort to hostile architecture?
Preferably a public one.

~~~
atoav
While it might be rational from a owner’s standpoint, their buildings usually
have a public part (e.g. because it is directly accessible from the street)
and my gut feeling is, that you should own up to it.

I know that many like their brutalist concrete surfaces clean, but ultimately
your building stands in the public with public roads connecting to it and a
public walking by and you have at least _some_ moral responsibility to also
serve that public if it doesn’t kill you.

If you wan’t to avoid people peeing everywhere, lobby for public toiletts.
Real estate owners are typically really good at that kind of lobbying,
typically it is always for thwir own good and never for the public good.

------
zxcvbn4038
LaGuardia airport blasts you with a loud piercing noise if you sit on the
toilets - an obvious move to keep people from lingering too long. But I’m
stubborn and I really had to go, so I can tell you from experience the noise
shuts off after a few minutes - I either made it overheat or I was sitting so
still the sensor thought the stall was empty.

~~~
twic
They should tune it to the brown note, that'd help keep things moving
efficiently:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_note](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_note)

~~~
zxcvbn4038
If the brown note was real it would probably be abused to death. High school
kids would drive down the road blasting it on their speakers. Debt collectors
would play it over the phone to embarrass people. YouTube people would be
wiring people’s door bells to play it as pranks. CIA would lock people in
ceramic rooms and play it for hours as torture. DARPA would spend a billion
dollars developing an anti-brown note and weaponize constipation.

------
jdavis703
Architecture becomes hostile when the design doesn't guide users to a better
alternative. It's fine to create a pee-deflecting wall, but there better be a
public bathroom nearby. Likewise it's fine to reserve some benches for people
who want to sit at the bus stop, but there should be some spaces nearby for
people who want to recline also.

~~~
egdod
> It's fine to create a pee-deflecting wall, but there better be a public
> bathroom nrearby

I’d say it’s perfectly fine for a private builder to arrange things such that
people are discouraged from peeing on his building. There’s no moral
requirement to provide public restrooms.

~~~
avs733
And why not? They are using publicly serviced space. The buildings would be
worthless without without publically funded roads.

If these buildings were truly private and exempt from the larger social
society they wouldn't need hostile architecture in the first place.

~~~
foldingmoney
Because the benefit of the public restrooms would extend to all private
buildings in the area, but the cost would fall entirely on whichever sucker
decided to pay for them -- and no one wants to be that sucker. That's why
public funding is required to pay for public goods. This is basic economics.

~~~
c22
I'd say the benefit would extend to all _citizens_ in the area, since the area
would no longer smell like urine. This could increase consumer traffic through
the area and raise the economic value of the sucker's property.

~~~
foldingmoney
Yes, while also raising the value of every non-sucker's property, hence the
problem.

------
sandij
Any experiences with intentionally hostile software architecture?

Curious how for example code project structure or inter-process messaging
constraints can prohibit mixing concerns or breaking the domain model. Also
curious how such a forceful environment is experienced and whether it has the
intended effect.

~~~
unhammer
Well, there are hostile user interfaces at least:
[https://userinyerface.com/](https://userinyerface.com/)
[https://www.darkpatterns.org/](https://www.darkpatterns.org/)

and in programming you have defensive/deterrent features like prefixing unsafe
function names with "unsafe"

------
dugditches
Lots of major cities are dealing with growing Homeless populations.

Stuff like this just seems like a gross bandaid
[https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/07/03/article-0-13E7211...](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/07/03/article-0-13E72117000005DC-269_964x640.jpg)

~~~
masklinn
Holy shit, the bolt-studded steps in the wiki page were already gross, but
putting "anti-homeless" dragon's teeth under bridges and overpasses steps way
over it and into "abusively horrendous".

------
dang
Related threads from 2016:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12041639](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12041639)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13040313](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13040313)

I feel like there was a discussion about this quite recently, too, but can't
find it.

------
quickthrower2
By that definition (esp. with urinal example), I'd include: locks, steps and
fences. All have the effect of stopping some people doing what they wanted.

------
t0astbread
Maybe a pointless comment but this very article was linked in another post[1]
that was trending a few hours ago. Could it be that this post was made while
browsing Wikipedia from that other post?

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20619947](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20619947)

------
jxramos
This fella went all out with a challenge accepted attitude...

the fakir's rest
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv3M7FxJqtM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv3M7FxJqtM)

------
the_arun
Aren’t skateboard deterrents example of this?

~~~
afarrell
If skateboard deterrents refers to the nubs which are put on the railings for
stairs, I'd say those come with more an ethos of, "This object is for the
public to walk up stairs more safely. You will not use it as a ramp-bar. That
both makes it unusable for anyone while you are doing that and also causes it
to break down from friction more quickly."

Since there isn't really a fundamental human need to slide a skateboard down a
handrail, I don't think it really counts as "hostile". It just represents,
"I've agreed to provide a certain level of maintenance for this public
handrail. Not enough to handle repeated skateboard friction."

------
jotm
Bus stops in the UK are terrible because of this. I could never sit on them,
in fact I would stand outside unless it's raining.

------
PinkMilkshake
Hostile architecture is fundamentally sick. To take public space and purposely
make it hostile to the human body is just so abhorrent, I don't understand how
it isn't illegal everywhere. There's something about it that really gets to
me. It's just so twisted at such a deep level that it feels like it is (or
borderlines on) a human rights violation.

~~~
wahern
I take it you've never been to a playground taken over by the homeless and
drug addicts? Had to wash down the the sidewalk at 5AM in the morning so
people don't step in filth walking into the office or store?

I don't see anything wrong with hostile architecture, per se. What's wrong is
hostile architecture in the absence of shelters and housing programs. But the
solution isn't giving over playgrounds and store fronts, but to provide
housing.

And as someone who has lived in multiple large cities, I've seen firsthand (as
an observer, as an acquaintance) a not insubstantial fraction of homeless will
simply refuse assistance, whether because of mental problems or drug
addiction. So the presence of hostile architecture doesn't necessarily mean
shelter doesn't exist, it simply reflects other societal ills.

~~~
PinkMilkshake
It's not just about the homeless, although they are the most affected. The
very idea of it is horrible. We are slowly turning our cities into giant
torture champers where it's uncomfortable to sit, uncomfortable to stand,
uncomfortable to lie down. Everything is covered in nubs and spikes and built
at angles that force you to expend energy. You can't ever relax. It's like
this new breed of shopping malls that have no clocks, no rubbish bins, no
benches and no water fountains. You either have to be shopping or leaving.
Eventually the only comfy place left will be at home.

~~~
wahern
Because these things are abused. Simply providing them doesn't solve the
problem--we'll just have really disgusting facilities that few people, if
anybody, uses.

I don't know how to solve the problem. But railing against the symptoms
doesn't help. Filthy public spaces are worse than _no_ public spaces, and no
public spaces is precisely what we'll get if we try to address the symptoms
without addressing the underlying causes. Parks disappear, buildings are built
without public spaces entirely or with "public spaces" _inside_ buildings
where security patrol and which become inaccessible after hours, etc.

