New York is filled with some of the most innovative architecture and urban planning in the world. Nearly every kind of public space in the city has been developed with close attention to detail. And those details offer not-so-invisible clues about how people can and should interact with these spaces.
Why cities are full of uncomfortable benches
It’s not just you — they’re an example of hostile architecture.
While designs can encourage positive behaviors, often they are designed to stop the opposite. Defensive design goes by many names: hostile architecture, dystopian planning, natural surveillance. But the goal is all the same: control behavior and limit the ways an object or space can be misused.
And a growing number of defensive designs in cities worldwide target and discourage people who are homeless from feeling welcome in public space. In response, some blogs have taken to documenting the many hostile designs one can find in major cities.
New York City is struggling to respond to its burgeoning homeless population. While the United States is currently experiencing a decline in the overall homeless population, in New York, the numbers are growing to alarming new heights each year.
Because emergency shelters aren’t supposed to function as long-term housing solutions, people experiencing homelessness fend for themselves on the streets. It isn’t uncommon to see ad hoc shelter solutions in public parks or on subway benches.
Watch the video above to learn more about how defensive designs prompt an uncomfortable discussion about who gets to use public spaces — and who gets left, or pushed, out.
Note: This story features some statistics collected by the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) — a data-driven group that coordinates federal efforts to eliminate homelessness in the States. A significant portion of their data comes from annual “Point-In-Time” counts coordinated at the local level every January. These efforts rely on volunteers to comb neighborhood streets to get an accurate count of the unsheltered homeless population for a given night. Many of the 2018 initiatives will take place around January 25 to 27, with signups happening right now. If you would like to participate, you can visit this link to learn more.
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