Law and hostile design in the city: Imposing decorum and visibility regimes in the urban environment

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to examine new trends in the regulation of access to public space, looking at the legal implications of the adoption of hostile architecture and objects as a widespread tendency in urban design. The paper approaches the rising interest in hostile architecture and design with the aim to show the normative aspects of such a trend and how law contributes to shaping an urban space more prone to the insertion of hostile urban objects in it. I begin with a brief discussion of attempts to define and understanding hostile architecture through some examples and showing how the topic matters for legal and socio-legal studies. Then, drawing on examples from Italian legislation, I analyze how the link between “decorum” and hostile architecture shapes public spaces and how this helps to create a specific regime of visibility and expulsion for certain categories of people. Finally, I make some concluding remarks on how hostile design represents a challenge for re-thinking cities in more inclusive terms.

A Classification Scheme for Hostile Design

“…The notion of "hostile architecture" or "hostile design" has become important within contemporary research and criticism on the politics of urban spaces, especially in online journalism, blogging, and social media. An academic discussion is also beginning to emerge, one that is widely interdisciplinary and still largely fragmented and exploratory (e.g., Savicic & Savic, 2013;Rosenberger, 2014;Schindler, 2015;Chellew, 2016;Petty, 2016;Armborst et al, 2017;de Fine Licht, 2017;Jensen, 2017;Rosenberger, 2017a;Stevens, 2017;Smith & Walters, 2018;Chellew, 2019;de Fine Licht, 2020;Eggersglüß, 2020;Crippen & Klement, 2020;Jensen, 2020;Lorini & Moroni, 2020;Rosenberger, 2020b;Binnington & Russo, 2021;Lynch, 2021;Nitrato Izzo, 2022;Giamariano et al, 2023;Kullman, 2023;Moatasim, 2023). The fledgling status of this discussion is reflected in the variety of terms used in different writings to refer to similar phenomena, which, in addition to "hostile architecture" and "hostile design, " include "unpleasant design, " "disciplinary architecture, " "architectural exclusion, " "defensive architecture, " and others.…”