Introduction
Hostile architecture, also commonly referred to as exclusionary design, describes attempts to restrict a person’s ability to use a public space. While this category of urban design usually goes unnoticed by the general public, it targets homeless populations and people who engage in activities which use a space in a way that diverges from the intended use. Some common examples of hostile architecture include spikes on the ground to deter skateboarders, benches with numerous railings, bumps along buildings, and even bike racks that prohibit an individual from resting.
Source: Kent Williams
Hostile architecture results from urban planning decisions that aim to fight perceived social disorder rather than maximize the utility of public spaces. One early example is the installation of urine deflectors to prohibit public urination. Hostile architecture has also been tied to systemic racism. One example is the Detroit Eight Mile Wall, built in 1941, that intentionally separated white neighborhoods from Black neighborhoods.
Nowadays, this style of design has been utilized to combat the presence of unhoused people in public spaces. While half of Americans struggle to pay their rent, there is still a strong culture that stigmatizes homeless populations. As an urban concept deeply embedded in systemic discrimination, there is no simple answer to address homelessness. However, if urban engineers and the general public deem exclusionary design to be morally acceptable, the question becomes: who counts as a member of the public in the eyes of urban planners?
Overall, civilians have reported that hostile architecture has created public spaces which are less inviting to all audiences, particularly elderly people, pregnant women, and children who tend to sit and rest for longer periods of time. While hostile architecture is only meant to target vulnerable populations, such as unhoused people, this form of exclusionary design has made public spaces less welcoming to all people.
Hostile Public Areas
Hostile Architecture in Public Spaces
Public spaces include parks, sidewalks, transit stops, subway stations, plazas, storefronts, and even underpasses—anywhere people might rest, wait, or gather. These areas may contain hostile architecture, such as spikes on flat surfaces, benches with mid-armrests, slanted seating, anti-loitering noise, bright lighting, and anti-graffiti coatings. Though often justified as promoting safety or cleanliness, these features reshape public space in ways that make them less accessible, especially to people who need them most.
What Does It Look Like?
In New York City, public benches in parks, plazas, and subway platforms are often segmented with armrests or tilted at an angle to prevent lying down. Some areas also use bright lighting, fencing, or even motion-activated sprinklers—tactics that critics argue criminalize rest and make public space feel hostile to the most vulnerable.
Portland uses classical music at transit stops to drive away teens and unhoused people at night, while in Cardiff, business owners have installed buzzing sound machines to deter drug dealers loitering in front of their storefronts. Detroit has used physical barriers and planter boxes to block public resting spots, effectively privatizing spaces once meant for everyone.
How Do These Designs Impact People?
These design choices increase instability and displacement by pushing unhoused individuals out of visible spaces without offering real alternatives. According to the National Homeless Organization, hostile architecture can cause sleep deprivation, chronic stress, and exposure to extreme weather conditions, all of which increase the risk of illness, injury, and long-term health decline. Constant displacement also worsens mental health — increasing the risk of mental health decline twofold — and limits a person’s capacity to seek support or stabilize their life.
These designs also isolate elderly, disabled, and low-income people from accessing basic infrastructure, making public areas harder to navigate and less safe. Exclusionary design harms not only those without housing but also the broader community by damaging social trust and weakening the health of public space. Even people who are not unhoused may feel alienated, as these designs discourage rest, social interaction, and community gathering.
Does Hostile Architecture Work?
There’s little evidence that hostile design addresses the root causes of homelessness. While some proponents of hostile architecture see it as a practical solution to homelessness, critics argue that it simply hides the problem instead of solving it. According to NYU News, these designs are “not only cruel but ineffective, as they simply displace and exacerbate the homelessness crisis rather than alleviate it”. Lack of public investment in housing often leads cities to adopt short-term design fixes that backfire by pushing unhoused people into more dangerous or isolated areas, increasing health and safety risks. For the broader public, these designs can make shared spaces like parks and bus stops less usable and welcoming.
Hostile Transportation
Hostile Design in Public Transit
Public transit is often used by unhoused populations for shelter, access to services, and general mobility. Offering transportation to essential services, it has become an integral resource for unhoused individuals. However, to prevent the use of such infrastructure as shelter for unhoused populations, cities have implemented various forms of hostile infrastructure in public transit areas in recent years. For example, in NYC, the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), has begun replacing benches with leaning bars in some subway stations. Various NYC residents have expressed confusion and dissatisfaction with the change as the leaning bars have decreased the quality of their commute. For residents such as parents with children, elderly people, and those with physical disabilities, these changes have created an undesirable environment where there is no comfortable resting area. Similar tactics have been employed in other cities, such as with the removal of back rests and strangely shaped benches in Tokyo and London. Such changes have made it uncomfortable for unhoused individuals to reside along public transit corridors, but have also negatively impacted the commuting experience for all residents.
Highways & Car-Centric Infrastructure
Highway development in the 20th century was heavily influenced by racial tensions and had a disproportionate impact on minority communities. In the 1920s, NYC urban planners developed highways along minority neighborhoods which disrupted communities, exacerbated racial segregation, and interrupted city bus transit routes. Beyond this, highways are a car-centric development that cater to passenger vehicles and prevent people from using other forms of transit. While expediting travel for private vehicles, public transit, pedestrian, and biking transportation alternatives are significantly inhibited.
There have also been recent measures to prevent unhoused individuals from taking shelter above highway overpasses and below bridges. In Portland, Oregon, for example, concrete planters were placed under a relatively low-traffic roadway bridge where many people formerly took shelter. This action was understood as an attempt to prevent people from seeking refuge in the area as they previously had. From obstructing connectivity, public transit routes, and preventing unhoused populations from seeking shelter, highways have become a critical site of hostile transportation.
Looking Ahead: Alternatives to Hostile Architecture
Hostile architecture is a cosmetic solution to a deeper societal problem, with negative impacts on various populations. As Melbourne Zero notes, hostile design harms public health and social trust—solutions must aim for dignity, not exclusion. These features can increase stress, sleep deprivation, and isolation. Designing with compassion makes cities safer and more connected for everyone.
Parasitic Architecture
One proposal, called parasitic architecture, introduces temporary structures that provide comfort and shelter while being removable or adaptable to existing infrastructure. While parasitic architecture has not seen much widespread adoption as a housing solution, it highlights and addresses public loitering in a more humane way than things like sloped benches and ground spikes. Similar to parasitic architecture, housing trends like tiny homes and container homes offer mitigating solutions to housing insecurity that drive homelessness. Container homes and tiny homes both occupy similar niches of small footprint affordable housing that could be implemented on a large scale to offer new mixed use residential communities that could integrate into existing communities.
Zoning Reform
However, urban design cannot eliminate homelessness alone—policy change is also necessary. Reforming zoning codes in American cities to allow for the construction of more multi-residential housing would allow for increased supply, which would drive prices down, increasing the affordability of housing. Cities like Minneapolis and Kansas City have seen success in creating more affordable housing through tax programs and zoning reforms. The Minneapolis 2040 plan is an initiative by the city to provide more affordable housing in Minneapolis with strategies that include tax incentives on developments with at least 20 percent affordable housing units. Kansas City similarly has created a public-private partnership housing trust that allows for the creation and preservation of affordable housing in the City.
Subsidized Housing
In Europe, some nations’ approach to housing could also indirectly reduce the need for hostile architecture through an increased supply of affordable housing. After World War II, European countries like the United Kingdom, The Netherlands and Germany all developed their own government-built affordable housing initiatives that led to higher rates of homeownership in the European Union than in the United States. This affordable housing takes the form of Social housing, which are government funded housing projects offered to tenants at a subsidized rate. Social housing often exists as a separate market from private rental markets, making it a social safety net for those who need it most. Government-constructed affordable housing like this would be hard to accomplish in the United States without coordinated large-scale investment of both private contractors and government entities.
Hostile architecture is a symptom of a larger crisis that is affecting America—the affordable housing crisis. Without real investment into new supply of housing, hostile architecture will be a cosmetic solution to a growing societal problem—one that will only get worse in the coming years.