Hostile Architecture in Los Angeles

An Embedded Planner’s perspective.

Anti-seating bars prevent people from sitting in unapproved locations. This man had to squat in front of an otherwise ordinary seating ledge. Documented on May 28, 2005 in Los Angeles. [Photo by Jonathan Pacheco Bell © All Rights Reserved]

Last year, students from an Australian university reached out for my thoughts on Hostile Architecture. It was for a journalism course studying Los Angeles’s houseless crisis. The group wanted to ensure their research acknowledged the hostile and defensive design targeting unhoused Angelenos.

Given our timezone differences and mutual capacity limits, we agreed to do the interview asynchronously over email. They sent a questionnaire. I reflected on each question, prepared my responses, and hit “send” days later. When the term ended, the students shared their final project, a thoroughly researched website investigating the causes and consequences of being unhoused in LA.

The website isn’t public due to privacy requirements, but the debate about public space equity and treatment of the unhoused is entirely in the public interest. So, I’ve decided to publish my interview responses on Hostile Architecture in Los Angeles. Below is the complete conversation (much of it did not make the final website). My responses are lightly edited for clarity and some privacy considerations.

When would you say that hostile/defensive architecture started to be implemented in urban development?