As we reach the end of January, the nights are staying consistently cold. If you’re like me, you probably have been blasting your heater at home, and keep a huge pile of blankets on your bed at all times. A large population of our city doesn’t have this privilege though. According to the City of Missoula’s page dedicated to houseless data, Missoula has around 644 families experiencing homelessness as of 2024.
Now imagine that on top of the stress of not having a set in place shelter, you also have to worry about where you are going to spend your day without being told to move by the city, or having to face harsh winter elements. Maybe you would opt for a bench to rest on, or an underpass to keep the snow from piling up on the ground around you. To your surprise, you are met with benches with sectioning bars disguised as armrests to keep you from sleeping, or metal or concrete spikes beneath the bridge. This is called ’hostile architecture,’ a style of urban design with the purpose of making the structure as inconvenient for users as humanly possible just to keep the homeless from resting there.
Hostile architecture is common in big cities. It’s used as a way to deter the homeless from using public spaces to rest, or even just exist. As the homelessness crisis continues to escalate, smaller towns have begun to crack down on the ways in which public space can be used too, prioritizing the aesthetic or look of their space over the comfort and convenience of the people.
The issue is that instead of putting any funding towards actually stabilizing the lives of these people, cities across the U.S. have allocated that money towards making public space unusable. This goes beyond affecting the homeless, as it makes downtown areas that were once designed to appear open and inviting look exclusive and unwelcoming in an almost uncanny manner.
Over the years America has lost the art of a third space, somewhere to go with little to no cost, outside of work, school, or home, where people can socialize and relax. I believe that hostile architecture plays a role in this., Because the inconvenience to the homeless person is also extended to the potential consumer. Picture the old couple who want to sit on the bench outside a cafe together but can’t handle the purposefully slanted seating, or the young kids who want to play near the surface of the concrete that the metal spikes poke out of to keep tents from being placed there. By trying to force out a population of those less fortunate, these corporations and cities have forced out the average citizen too.
Along with the third space, went designing buildings with the intention of them seeming inviting. Hostile architecture goes hand in hand with that corporate style, “millennial grey” that so many young people complain about online. The environment of many cafes is no longer one that is designed to be a cozy space for people to stay and socialize. Nowadays the focus is on flipping as many tables as possible in the shortest amount of time for profit, and hostile architecture (or interior design in this case) directly aids in that with obnoxious fluorescent lighting, or chairs with no backs to keep people from getting too comfortable.
If cities and businesses really want to protect the aesthetics of their spaces, then they need to shift their focus from using the same tactics they use on pigeons to keep certain groups of people out, and back to creating a space where all kinds of people actually want to go and feel welcome in.
