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...

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...

[creato]

> 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.

The charitable take is that public space is meant to be usable by the general public, not have it adversely possessed as permanent living space. Most "hostile architecture" is designed to prevent only the latter, not the former.

[gpvos]

The people in power are probably doing this because there are locals complaining about the homeless. So it's important that there are also locals who make it clear that they don't want this kind of unfriendly street furniture, and that they'll put up with the homeless until there is a solution that actually addresses the problem.

[oh_sigh]

Is there a clear solution to homelessness that only requires people in power to have a heart in order to be effective?

[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

[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.

[jxramos]

I'm looking at these pee deflecting solutions. It's pretty hilarious to design a void filling mechanism to simply use gravity to deflect the urine back onto the urinator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti_urination_devices_in_Norw...

[FearNotDaniel]

Men don't pee in public because they need to. They do it because they can. And because they make behavioural choices (drinking too many pints of beer before the pub closes/football match ends, and not going to the toilet while they have the opportunity, for example) that increase the likelihood of them "needing" to make otherwise pleasant public places filthy and disgusting. If public-toilets-everywhere was a basic human necessity, there would be many more women peeing in the streets. Toxic masculinity thrives because we allow it to; peeing in the street, in the vast majority of cases, is an example of this.

[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://www.darkpatterns.org/

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

[Thiez]

Perhaps GCC qualifies? https://lwn.net/Articles/583140/

[batoure]

I came to the comments to talk about this, was totally hoping to scroll down and find a section about software in the wikipedia article.

I would argue that almost every project I have every worked on where the software was initially maintained by a single individual would be classified as "hostile architecture"

[twic]

Microservices advocates claim that the pain of implementing features across microservices encourages modularity.

[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...

[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=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

[jxramos]

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

the fakir's rest 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."

[dymk]

That's an example in the linked article, so yes

[saagarjha]

Sure, for skateboarders.

[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.