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In the interest of providing official guardianship for its vast inventory of public spaces, New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday (Feb. 16) announced former transit advocate Ya-Ting Liu will be the city's first-ever public realms officer. According to the New York Times, her role was created... View full entry
On Wednesday, a reader shared with the Mercury a photo of 22 newly-installed single U-shaped bike racks on one block along the eastern sidewalk of NW Broadway. The city's homeless encampment reporting system shows that members of the public have repeatedly reported campers on the sidewalk that's now dotted with bike racks […] The Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT), which regulates sidewalk use and bike rack installation, said the new racks were completely off their radar. — The Portland Mercury
Bike racks have also been deployed in Seattle to prevent tent encampments after that city’s campaign of police sweeps, which have been mirrored recently by its smaller Pacific Northwest neighbor. The owner of the vacant property adjacent to the racks is himself the developer... View full entry
Lately, though, I’ve found myself sitting on a lot of cramped metal benches of the kind that don’t invite you to linger long, or harsh concrete ones that leave you cold. That’s because public seating is becoming an endangered species. If a park bench is not being removed, the backup plan is often to make it uncomfortable. “Hostile architecture” — an urban design strategy intended to impede “antisocial” behavior — is proliferating all over the world. — The New York Times
Cities like San Francisco and Boston have quietly removed seating over the last decade in misguided efforts to curb outdoor sleeping. Interventions like sleep-preventing benches and other forms of cruel deterrents aimed at the homeless population have spilled over into the public sphere. Recently... View full entry
Plans are underway to start building in 2022 a pocket park where people experiencing homelessness will not only be welcome but will also be asked to design and build aspects of the space. It’s the only project of its kind in Philadelphia, say design professionals involved in the project. — The Philadelphia Inquirer
Supported by a grant from the William Penn Foundation, Philadelphia's largest homeless shelter, the Sunday Breakfast Rescue Mission, aims to plan and build the small pocket park near its facility on North Pearl Street. View full entry
As New York grapples with its constant demand for public spaces, some residents are objecting to the restrictive and exclusionary designs and policies that they say reflect an increasingly hostile city. And as more developers build amenities in exchange for greater density, there is increased scrutiny on what passes for free and open public spaces. — Gothamist
The implications for hostile architecture are often presented as subtle design solutions that can aide the public from unwanted city disturbances. However, many individuals are beginning to notice these design efforts to become politically driven initiatives for controlling people... View full entry
Urban designers are increasingly being tasked with an emergent ‘design challenge’ for public spaces: how best to deliver anti-terror infrastructure while generating a pleasant urban environment. By allowing themselves to be drawn into this challenge, and by dutifully working to respond with creative and constructive solutions, they are inadvertently helping to normalize a creeping ‘fortification’ of our cities that in turn contributes to a wider process of ‘bordering’ across the world. — Failed Architecture
Urbanist Alice Sweitzer and Failed Architecture editor Charlie Clemoes share their thoughts on a booming new design task, "making an increasingly aggressive urban situation more palatable to an ever more anxious citizenry." View full entry
Geography is getting stranger: the map is breaking up. Now we need to attend to the unnatural places, the escape zones and gap spaces, the places that are sites of surprise but also of bewilderment and unease. — Places Journal
Negotiating the hostile architectures of the modern city — from the anti-pedestrian cobbles of a median strip to the unloved landscape of a traffic island — geographer Alistair Bonnett reflects on the increasingly disciplinarian nature of public space, and by crossing roads and planting... View full entry
[...] hostile architecture -- a controversial type of urban design aimed at preventing people from using public spaces in undesirable ways. [...]
CNN invited architect James Furzer, whose designs try to combat hostile architecture, to debate this issue with Dean Harvey, co-founder of the Factory Furniture: a company that produces many of the offending benches.
— CNN
"Is it really a bad thing that you're encouraging people to hang around those spaces?," asks architect James Furzer in his CNN debate with Dean Harvey of Factory Furniture, maker of the controversial Camden bench. "Is that not what architecture and design are about? If we designed a building... View full entry
With the growing trend towards hostile architecture now openly admitting its political incentives, are we in an age of transparent hostility? [...]
Whereas other instances of hostile architecture are marked by their deliberate obscurity, the Camden Bench was developed, constructed and deployed in plain sight, making it an all too visible reminder of persistent negligence, raising the question: will hostile architecture become an accepted feature of the built environment?
— failedarchitecture.com
Related stories in the Archinect news:Amid London's austerity measures, "defensive design" becomes even more hostileLAPD directs officers to treat homeless people “with compassion” in new vague policyArchitecture of paranoia View full entry
