1/16/2024 0 Comments Anti homeless spike underpass![]() Downvote: Opinions that you Agree with.Upvote: Opinions that you Disagree with."You have various processes coming together, including economic processes that are making people vulnerable in the first place, like the bedroom tax and thresholds on welfare, but the next step seems to be to say: 'We are not even going to allow you to accommodate yourself in the most desperate way possible.DARK MODE NORMAL THEME How This Place Works "If you were being a bit cynical but also realistic, it is a kind of assault on the poor, a way of trying to displace their distress," he says. Rowland Atkinson, co-director of the Centre for Urban Research at the University of York, suggests the spikes and related architecture are part of a broader pattern of hostility and indifference towards social difference and poverty produced within cities. It's what some call the 'mallification' of public space, where everything becomes like a shopping mall." "So it's OK, for example, to sit around as long as you are in a cafe or in a designated place where certain restful activities such as drinking a frappucino should take place but not activities like busking, protesting or skateboarding. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian Innovations currently being developed by Central St Martins include "ATM art" – ground markings aimed at increasing the privacy and security of cash machine users. "I don't have a problem with the Camden bench – whose aesthetics others have criticised – but I do have a problem that in many locations benches, toilets and dustbins appear to have been removed to reduce anticipated crime, at the expense of the law-abiding majority." "If we wish to use design to reduce antisocial behaviour, then democracy needs to be visible in the crime-prevention design we put on our streets," she says. "Spikes are part of an outdated fortress aesthetic not welcome in communities, where there is recognition that urban design needs to be inclusive," says Lorraine Gamman, professor of design at Central St Martins and the director of the institution's Design Against Crime (DAC) research centre. Others emphasise the value of environmental design in deterring criminal behaviour, and insist that thinking has long moved on from such crude solutions as stainless steel spikes. ![]() "A lot of defensible architecture is added on to the street environment at a later stage, but equally with a lot of new developments it's apparent that questions of 'who do we want in this space, who do we not want' are being considered very early in the design stage," says the photographer Marc Vallée, who has documented anti-skateboarding architecture. New benches outside the Royal Courts of Justice in central London. To that list, add jagged, uncomfortable paving areas, CCTV cameras with speakers and "anti-teenager" sound deterrents, such as the playing of classical music at stations and so-called Mosquito devices, which emit irritatingly high-pitched sounds that only teenagers can hear. In addition to anti-skateboard devices, with names such as "pig's ears" and "skate stoppers", ground-level window ledges are increasingly studded to prevent sitting, slanting seats at bus stops deter loitering and public benches are divided up with armrests to prevent lying down. The actions of skateboarders and those angered at the spikes – since removed after an online petition surpassed 100,000 signatures and the London mayor, Boris Johnson, joined in the criticism – come at a time when many argue that cities are growing ever colder towards certain groups. "Whatever the authorities want to do to try to destroy public space, they can't get rid of everyday people who can come through an area without having to spend money and do something that they enjoy." "We're demonstrating today that you can still skateboard on it," said Dylan Leadley-Watkins, as he careered to a halt after hurling himself and his board along one of the benches in Covent Garden. Skateboarders are now attempting to subvert the benches in the way they know best. While not as obvious as the stainless steel "anti-homeless" spikes that appeared outside a London apartment block recently, the benches are part of a recent generation of urban architecture designed to influence public behaviour, known as "hostile architecture".
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