Have you ever tried to sit down at a bus stop only to find that the bench slopes too much to take a proper seat? Or found yourself puzzled by blue light in a stairwell, or annoyed at loud music in a public toilet ?
If you have, chances are this wasn’t a coincidence.
They are forms of defensive design or hostile architecture: or the ways in which our public spaces are shaped to deter certain behaviour or prevent certain people from using them. Sloping benches make it impossible to sleep on them. Blue light makes spaces less attractive to drug users. Loud music nudges toilet users to spend as little time there as possible.
While defensive design might help avoid antisocial behaviour, it also penalises some of the most vulnerable in our societies, especially homeless people.
In this episode, we are joined by Cara Chellew, a PhD candidate at McGill University in Montreal, an expert in defensive design and founder of the Defensive Urbanism Research Network. She explains the many forms of defensive design, which are often invisible, whether they work, and why they are so problematic.
Cara refers to her work on mapping defensive design in Toronto, which you can find here. In the episode, Cara also refers to the London Spikes Controversy, which you can read more about in this article.
If this episode makes you want to learn more about how policies devoid of empathy can make matters worse for people in poverty, check out The Empathy Fix – my forthcoming book on why poverty persists and how we can all get involved in tackling it. Out on 30 January, available for pre-order now!
Photo credit: Mathias Reding as Pexels.com
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