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.