Anti-homeless spikes and other 'defensive urban architecture'

[Perspicuo]

Anti-homeless spikes are just the latest in 'defensive urban architecture'
http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2...ss-spikes-latest-defensive-urban-architecture

Pay-per-minute benches, 'pig ears' to prevent skateboarding, devices that emit an unpleasant sound only teenagers can hear … cities have many tactics to discourage 'unwanted' behaviour

There was something heartening about the indignation expressed by Londoners this week against the “anti-homeless” spikes placed outside a luxury block of flats in Southwark. They were widely condemned as dehumanising, and compared with the strips of spikes used to deter pigeons from roosting. Yet anti-homeless spikes are nothing new. Not only are they found across the globe, from Nottingham to Tokyo, but they are just one weapon in an arsenal of “defensive architecture” strategies, employed to deter behaviour deemed unacceptable and encourage “proper” conduct. If you know where to look, you’ll discover that cities are full of subtle architectural features designed to nudge you in the right direction.

 

[ksen]

Hey, here's an idea: how about instead of using spikes to combat homelessness you use, oh, I don't know, homes?

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Hey, here's an idea: how about instead of using spikes to combat homelessness you use, oh, I don't know, homes?

treating human beings like human beings?

You ANARCHIST!

 

[ksen]

http://www.bogoboo.com/bizarre-park-bench-spikes/

I feel like the essence of capitalism has to be conveyed by a park bench with spikes that only retract if you pay money

 

[laughing dog]

I don't understand the tie-in between prevention of skateboarding in certain areas and deterring the homeless from using a facility. I know that skateboarding can be physically destructive to some structures and extremely annoying/dangerous to pedestrians

Benches with spikes retractable upon receipt of payment is an interesting combination of heartlessness and ingenuity. Too bad that ingenuity couldn't be combined with some humanity instead.

 

[doubtingt]

I don't understand the tie-in between prevention of skateboarding in certain areas and deterring the homeless from using a facility. I know that skateboarding can be physically destructive to some structures and extremely annoying/dangerous to pedestrians

Well, disease ridden homeless people covered in feces and piss, and who smell worse than death from 20 feet away are also annoying and dangerous to come in contact with, and like skateboarders use benches for unintended purposes that prevent others from using it for its intended purpose of briefly sitting to rest. A homeless person sleeping on a subway can make that entire car intolerably unuseable for other riders.

Most people are more sympathetic to why the homeless person is doing that than the skateboarder, but it doesn't seem a stretch to note the connection in efforts to design public facilities in a manner to prevents a select subset of the population from making unintended use of them that prevents others from using them. Pay-to-sit spikes violate this principle because they aren't about preventing unintended use but preventing poor people from using as intended (even just sitting). I don't see a problem with segmented benches that allow sitting but not lying down, and are separate from efforts to help the homeless.
Also, I have a good deal of sympathy for teenagers "loitering" and skateboarding. Most communities provide them with nowhere to go. We build playgrounds for young kids and adults can go to bars and many other places requiring $. But teens often have nowhere they are allowed to hang out and nothing to do. I think communities should push for skateboard parks to be just as much a part of park planning as providing playgrounds.

 

[Togo]

Also, I have a good deal of sympathy for teenagers "loitering" and skateboarding. Most communities provide them with nowhere to go. We build playgrounds for young kids and adults can go to bars and many other places requiring $. But teens often have nowhere they are allowed to hang out and nothing to do. I think communities should push for skateboard parks to be just as much a part of park planning as providing playgrounds.

In this country, many of them do. I've seen some very pleasant skateboard parks, often situated where the teenagers can be observed from further away than would be the case in a playground. More rarely I've seen areas set aside for skateboarding, even though they were never built with skateboards in mind. There's a nice little area for skateboarders that also features walls where graffiti art is permitted, just across the river from the Houses of Parliament, under the south bank centre.

I have mixed feelings about the other measures. On the one hand they signal a callous disregard for humanity combined with very little in the way of common sense, and an ignorance of even very basic principles of design. On the other hand, it's nice to have properties that can be vandalised with a clear conscience, and for people who deserve our contempt to label their dwellings appropriately for our convenience.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

I don't understand the tie-in between prevention of skateboarding in certain areas and deterring the homeless from using a facility. I know that skateboarding can be physically destructive to some structures and extremely annoying/dangerous to pedestrians

Well, disease ridden homeless people covered in feces and piss, and who smell worse than death from 20 feet away are also annoying and dangerous to come in contact with, and like skateboarders use benches for unintended purposes that prevent others from using it for its intended purpose of briefly sitting to rest. A homeless person sleeping on a subway can make that entire car intolerably unuseable for other riders.

Most people are more sympathetic to why the homeless person is doing that than the skateboarder, but it doesn't seem a stretch to note the connection in efforts to design public facilities in a manner to prevents a select subset of the population from making unintended use of them that prevents others from using them. Pay-to-sit spikes violate this principle because they aren't about preventing unintended use but preventing poor people from using as intended (even just sitting). I don't see a problem with segmented benches that allow sitting but not lying down, and are separate from efforts to help the homeless.
Also, I have a good deal of sympathy for teenagers "loitering" and skateboarding. Most communities provide them with nowhere to go. We build playgrounds for young kids and adults can go to bars and many other places requiring $. But teens often have nowhere they are allowed to hang out and nothing to do. I think communities should push for skateboard parks to be just as much a part of park planning as providing playgrounds.

you probably did not mean this, but here is how the first part of your post reads to someone who workss with houseless populations.

This person is filthy, sick and without a residence but the problem is that this person is causing another person who is clean, healthy and housed some discomfort.

I know you didn't mean it that way, but in an effort to make a valid point, you kinda read that way.

Street people make the rest of us uncomfortable and no, we have done nothing to deserve this.

Maybe that's the problem, we do nothing.

 

[laughing dog]

I don't understand the tie-in between prevention of skateboarding in certain areas and deterring the homeless from using a facility. I know that skateboarding can be physically destructive to some structures and extremely annoying/dangerous to pedestrians

Well, disease ridden homeless people covered in feces and piss, and who smell worse than death from 20 feet away are also annoying and dangerous to come in contact with, and like skateboarders use benches for unintended purposes that prevent others from using it for its intended purpose of briefly sitting to rest. A homeless person sleeping on a subway can make that entire car intolerably unuseable for other riders.

Most people are more sympathetic to why the homeless person is doing that than the skateboarder, but it doesn't seem a stretch to note the connection in efforts to design public facilities in a manner to prevents a select subset of the population from making unintended use of them that prevents others from using them. Pay-to-sit spikes violate this principle because they aren't about preventing unintended use but preventing poor people from using as intended (even just sitting). I don't see a problem with segmented benches that allow sitting but not lying down, and are separate from efforts to help the homeless.
Also, I have a good deal of sympathy for teenagers "loitering" and skateboarding. Most communities provide them with nowhere to go. We build playgrounds for young kids and adults can go to bars and many other places requiring $. But teens often have nowhere they are allowed to hang out and nothing to do. I think communities should push for skateboard parks to be just as much a part of park planning as providing playgrounds.

Thank you for pointing out the unintended consequence of design effect.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Pay-to-sit spikes violate this principle because they aren't about preventing unintended use but preventing poor people from using as intended (even just sitting).

Unless the principle in play isn't 'they're using that bench wrong' but rather 'we don't want their sort where we have to see them.'

 

[doubtingt]

Pay-to-sit spikes violate this principle because they aren't about preventing unintended use but preventing poor people from using as intended (even just sitting).

Unless the principle in play isn't 'they're using that bench wrong' but rather 'we don't want their sort where we have to see them.'

Sure, every act coheres with some principle. I said it doesn't cohere with the principle that these public facilities are intended for purpose and for widespread use. I think that is a socially, politically, and morally justifiable principle, and I suspect most people agree with that. Like I said, the spikes don't do anything to restrict use to sitting. They just restrict who can use the bench for sitting or for laying down. I don't think that is a justifiable principle for public facilities. Thus, pay-to-sit spikes are not in the same category as benches with armrests, and don't just differ in degree but are qualitatively distinct in terms of the principles they can be grounded in.

 

[Jarhyn]

I don't mind the spikes. What I mind is the spikes when there are no other alternative sleeping places. you solve homelessness by providing homes. You solve noxiousness of vagrants by providing public shower facilities. Businesses on Hennepin ave in Minneappolis have massive problems in that the homeless go into the bathrooms to shower and wash their clothes. There is nowhere else they can do it. How do you expect them to not be noxious when we give them none of the means necessary to be anything else? I'd wager that it'd be easier to put in means to defend our structures from wastrels when we provide places to sleep and shower and have laundry services. At that point being a nuisance is a choice, and duck people who choose to be a nuisance. Then they may even be able to (GASP!) find jobs. And get apartments. Of course there is still the problem that we don't provide those same basic necessities to non-homeless people. That's a problem too...

As to pig ears, fuck skateboarders. They choose to be a nuisance and it wrecks the infrastructure. Sure, kids need something to do with their time. I don't mind skate parks being a thing. They should be a part of every high school grounds, open to students until curfew. But not on sidewalks and streets I am paying for.

 

[doubtingt]

I don't understand the tie-in between prevention of skateboarding in certain areas and deterring the homeless from using a facility. I know that skateboarding can be physically destructive to some structures and extremely annoying/dangerous to pedestrians

Well, disease ridden homeless people covered in feces and piss, and who smell worse than death from 20 feet away are also annoying and dangerous to come in contact with, and like skateboarders use benches for unintended purposes that prevent others from using it for its intended purpose of briefly sitting to rest. A homeless person sleeping on a subway can make that entire car intolerably unuseable for other riders.

Most people are more sympathetic to why the homeless person is doing that than the skateboarder, but it doesn't seem a stretch to note the connection in efforts to design public facilities in a manner to prevents a select subset of the population from making unintended use of them that prevents others from using them. Pay-to-sit spikes violate this principle because they aren't about preventing unintended use but preventing poor people from using as intended (even just sitting). I don't see a problem with segmented benches that allow sitting but not lying down, and are separate from efforts to help the homeless.
Also, I have a good deal of sympathy for teenagers "loitering" and skateboarding. Most communities provide them with nowhere to go. We build playgrounds for young kids and adults can go to bars and many other places requiring $. But teens often have nowhere they are allowed to hang out and nothing to do. I think communities should push for skateboard parks to be just as much a part of park planning as providing playgrounds.

Thank you for pointing out the unintended consequence of design effect.

Wow, <edit> Your post was nothing but "stereotypes" of skateboarders, showing grave ignorance that just as many or more people are "annoyed" and put in danger by the actions by homeless persons, their very common foul odor, and the objective fact of the high levels of communicable diseases that homeless people often carry. What I said about the homeless is at least as true as what you said about skateboarders, because what you emotionally disparage as "stereotypes" are general truths that accurately characterize a significant portion of the people in question. Unlike you, I don't distort reality for political objectives and emotional payoff. I can acknowledge unpleasant facts that don't fit neatly into a ideological narrative of social injustice. Your ideological faith prevents you from acknowledging the realities that the people you want to point to only as a rallying cry for your myopic focus on economic injustice have negative attributes that negatively impact those around them in very real ways and not just because they make us uncomfortable with guilt.

 

[Jarhyn]

I don't understand the tie-in between prevention of skateboarding in certain areas and deterring the homeless from using a facility. I know that skateboarding can be physically destructive to some structures and extremely annoying/dangerous to pedestrians

Well, disease ridden homeless people covered in feces and piss, and who smell worse than death from 20 feet away are also annoying and dangerous to come in contact with, and like skateboarders use benches for unintended purposes that prevent others from using it for its intended purpose of briefly sitting to rest. A homeless person sleeping on a subway can make that entire car intolerably unuseable for other riders.

Most people are more sympathetic to why the homeless person is doing that than the skateboarder, but it doesn't seem a stretch to note the connection in efforts to design public facilities in a manner to prevents a select subset of the population from making unintended use of them that prevents others from using them. Pay-to-sit spikes violate this principle because they aren't about preventing unintended use but preventing poor people from using as intended (even just sitting). I don't see a problem with segmented benches that allow sitting but not lying down, and are separate from efforts to help the homeless.
Also, I have a good deal of sympathy for teenagers "loitering" and skateboarding. Most communities provide them with nowhere to go. We build playgrounds for young kids and adults can go to bars and many other places requiring $. But teens often have nowhere they are allowed to hang out and nothing to do. I think communities should push for skateboard parks to be just as much a part of park planning as providing playgrounds.

Thank you for pointing out the unintended consequence of design effect.

Wow, <edit>. Your post was nothing but "stereotypes" of skateboarders, showing grave ignorance that just as many or more people are "annoyed" and put in danger by the actions by homeless persons, their very common foul odor, and the objective fact of the high levels of communicable diseases that homeless people often carry. What I said about the homeless is at least as true as what you said about skateboarders, because what you emotionally disparage as "stereotypes" are general truths that accurately characterize a significant portion of the people in question. Unlike you, I don't distort reality for political objectives and emotional payoff. I can acknowledge unpleasant facts that don't fit neatly into a ideological narrative of social injustice. Your ideological faith prevents you from acknowledging the realities that the people you want to point to only as a rallying cry for your myopic focus on economic injustice have negative attributes that negatively impact those around them in very real ways and not just because they make us uncomfortable with guilt.

Abusing them won't make them less diseased or filthy. There are two ways to actually address the problem: shoot them or house them and provide facilities in which to wash. Those are your options. If people continue to be noxious after option 2, I won't stop you from option 1. But I think jumping that gun isn't somewhere you want to go.

 

[laughing dog]

Wow, <edit>. Your post was nothing but "stereotypes" of skateboarders, showing grave ignorance that just as many or more people are "annoyed" and put in danger by the actions by homeless persons, their very common foul odor, and the objective fact of the high levels of communicable diseases that homeless people often carry. What I said about the homeless is at least as true as what you said about skateboarders, because what you emotionally disparage as "stereotypes" are general truths that accurately characterize a significant portion of the people in question.

How did a simple thank you for pointing out the consequences of unintended design prompt such an outburst of bile?

Unlike you, I don't distort reality for political objectives and emotional payoff.

No, you erupt with irrationalities over distorted versions of posts for an emotional payoff.

I can acknowledge unpleasant facts that don't fit neatly into a ideological narrative of social injustice.

You mean like homeless people are dirty, diseased and dangerous while skateboarders are just bored teenagers who never endanger people or destroy property?

Your ideological faith prevents you from acknowledging the realities that the people you want to point to only as a rallying cry for your myopic focus on economic injustice have negative attributes that negatively impact those around them in very real ways and not just because they make us uncomfortable with guilt.

If you read your own response with open eyes, you'd realize how proud Dr. Phil would be of your pop psychological twaddle.

 

[Perspicuo]

If you don't like the stench of the homeless, install shower heads. Better even, slyly lure them away from the benches. With homes, or at least small rooms with the space for a cot and hardly anything more (if you're penny wise--or penny cheap).

Also, what are pig ears, other than the porcine body part of course?

 

[KeepTalking]

This is a pig ear:

 

[AthenaAwakened]

This is a pig ear:

I never knew that was called that.

Thank you.

I learned a new thing

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Hey, here's an idea: how about instead of using spikes to combat homelessness you use, oh, I don't know, homes?

Look at the homeless thread on here. Many of the homeless are afraid of becoming part of the system again.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If you don't like the stench of the homeless, install shower heads. Better even, slyly lure them away from the benches. With homes, or at least small rooms with the space for a cot and hardly anything more (if you're penny wise--or penny cheap).

A few years back the paper here had an article about the homeless situation when we had what is for us a very cold snap. They were asking some of the people on the street why they didn't go to the shelters. One answer: Too many rules--things like "take a shower every day".