These thoughts were written by Gabe, one of our 2020 summer interns. The opinions expressed herein do not reflect those of Civitas other than respect for the value of open dialogue.
In case you haven’t been paying attention, something wicked has swept through the American City these past seventy years. It had humble beginnings, coming to fruition with a mixture of the G.I. Bill, systemic racism, the rise of the car, the decimation of intercity light rail, a genuinely high amount of violent crime, and timing that couldn’t be better. I’m talking, of course, about the advent of contemporary suburbia.
And suburbia is a living death sentence to the city as we knew it.
No longer is the city where you live.
The city is now where you go, sometimes.
It’s a fundamental shift from most all of history, and it beat cities down. The City of St. Louis has roughly 11% of the metro area population, which is far below average (24%). Ask why that is and you’ll get a different answer every time. Honestly, it doesn’t matter what killed, or tried to kill, the American City, for it still lies martyred.
And in the specter of what the city thought it was, the city was promptly desecrated in attempts to rescue something that couldn’t come back. Call it Robert Moses, call it suburbia with a shotgun at its mother, call it the sunk-cost fallacy, or call it the Interstate Highway System, all eyes were on the same prize: get people into the city again. But ferrying workers into high rises doesn’t save dying cities, it just moves workers.
Which people understand now, and it’s one of the reasons why most development is tied to this vague notion of “beautification.” Here’s a little tip: developers don’t care how pretty the thing is, they just want people to spend more time there.
Which makes it all the more interesting that they’re designing people out of the public sphere.
Perhaps that’s too harsh. But here’s the thing: people still live in American cities, as different as they now are. Some of those people happen to be homeless, for whatever reason, once again, the circumstances don’t matter. What does matter is that they are people, and they have to sleep and stay somewhere.
That’s not a terribly radical statement, and you shouldn’t read it as such.
Every human is a person, and every human has to sleep and stay somewhere. Most people just do it in the comfort and security of their home.
The homeless are left with public spaces, which makes sense. They’re public spaces, after all, and homeless people are, by virtue of being alive, members of the public. Yet, cities seem hell bent on designing the public out of public spaces. Stuart Semple, British contemporary artist (and famous Anish Kapoor nemesis) calls them “Hostile Designs.”
Writing from the Hostile Design Campaign, which aims to catalog hostile public spaces across Britain and the world, Semple decries the architecture as “designs against humanity. They are made specifically to exclude, harm, or otherwise hinder the freedom of a human being. Quite often they aim to remove a certain section of a community from a public space.”
Once it’s pointed out to you, it’s next to impossible to not see it. Are you ever walking around, and along a curb or railing there are metal panels sticking out? They’re small, you’ll miss them if you don’t look. Those are meant to stop skateboarders from grinding. The board gets caught and stops, forcing them to skate somewhere else or go without grinding.
Have you ever wondered why the windowsills outside many buildings are sloped? Try sitting on one. Try laying on one to take a quick nap. You can’t, not for long. It keeps people from loitering, and it keeps the homeless from having a sheltered spot to sleep for the night.
Do you ever sit on a park bench with a middle railing? Why’s that there? It’s too far to use as an armrest, but too close to fit two people in a single segment. Try laying down, you either crunch yourself into a ball, or you give up and go somewhere else.
Maybe you’re still wondering what’s so wrong with it?
To quote Semple again: “It is a horrendous and prejudicial practice, that planners, fabricators, designers and councils pay huge amounts of money for. It often attacks the most vulnerable people in our community, regularly the homeless. It sends out a very clear signal, that certain people aren’t wanted. It gives a sense of credibility to prejudicial attitudes, and stops people having to address real issues.”
There’s not a homelessness problem if you never see any homeless people. It turns human beings into statistics, banishes members of the public from enjoying what are supposed to be public spaces.
So, if you ask the question “Who Does the City Belong to?” be prepared for several different answers. In downtown St. Louis, the answer seems to be not skateboarders and definitely not the homeless.
I spent two and a half hours exploring downtown to hunt for hostile architecture in the city I have always lived in. I started with a shred of hope, perhaps it wouldn’t be as prevalent as Semple suggests. It was. I got out of my car and the first thing I laid eyes on was a bus stop bench. It was the perfect length to stretch out and lie down on. At least, it would be, if the bench weren’t designed with two panels sticking right through it. It “demarcates the bench into individual seats” I’m sure it was presented. It also makes it impossible to lie on comfortably. Not that it would stop anyone from sleeping there, as just across the street was another bus stop of the same design with a homeless man sleeping.
Kiener Plaza, originally dedicated in 1962, underwent a major renovation from 2016 to 2017. It came out of that renovation gorgeous and arguably the most hostile location downtown. The benches are long, curved pieces, and they’re all divided just too short to comfortably lay on. I’m only 5’9”, and I could barely fit. If you could get a skateboard onto an edge, it’s got metal panels to bump you off. There’s little shade in Kiener Plaza. It opens views of the architecture of the city. It also makes sure the oppressive heat of the summers will always bear down upon gatherings. It keeps protests from spending too much time there. After all, who wants to stay in the heat? The oval of grass on the east side of the plaza has a distinct incline as it approaches the Old Courthouse. All of that was deliberate. Kiener Plaza has a playground tucked behind a cover of trees. Even the areas designed for children, designed for play, are tucked behind trees to muffle the sound of play.
It doesn’t have to be this way, and St. Louis didn’t use to be this way either. This is a new choice, and it’s a new choice that’s infecting every part of our city. The Archgrounds were recently renovated, putting a piece of 44 underground and allowing one to walk unfettered from the Old Courthouse to the entrance. The path has long stone benches flanking it on both sides. The benches themselves lend ample room to sleep, but they loathe skateboarders. Move further into the Archgrounds though, and the hostile architecture disappears. If anything, the Gateway Arch has some of the most welcoming architecture in downtown.
We can build a beautiful city that isn’t hostile. We can create public spaces without having to govern who is welcome. We can answer the question “Who Does the City Belong to?” with a resounding “everybody.” All we need to do is decide that it’s what matters to us.
If you want to help, I’m sorry, but there isn’t an easy fix for this one. Eliminating hostile architecture requires not only a fundamental restructuring of the past twenty years of public design, but also enough influence to make developers stop making these designs.
Stuart Semple does still work to catalog hostile architecture. He sells identification stickers here if you’d like to help expose design crimes.
In the meantime, the homeless need to sleep somewhere. There are many homeless shelters in St. Louis, here’s only a few:
Peter & Paul Community Services
