“...a history riddled with racial tensions and prejudiced policies.”

September 3, 2016 8:26 AM

Discrimination by Design: The Many Ways Design Decisions Treat People Unequally. by Lena Groeger [Pro Publica] “Discriminatory design and decision-making affects all aspects of our lives: from the quality of our health care and education to where we live to what scientific questions we choose to ask. It would be impossible to cover them all, so we’ll focus on the more tangible and visual design that humans interact with every day.” [Previously.] [Previously.]

Related:

- Unpleasant Design & Hostile Urban Architecture [99% Invisible Podcast: Episode 219] [.MP3] [99% Invisible on FanFare]

Benches in parks, train stations, bus shelters and other public places are meant to offer seating, but only for a limited duration. Many elements of such seats are subtly or overtly restrictive. Arm rests, for instance, indeed provide spaces to rest arms, but they also prevent people from lying down or sitting in anything but a prescribed position. This type of design strategy is sometimes classified as “hostile architecture,” or simply: “unpleasant design.”

- Robert Moses, Pig-Ears and the Camden Bench: How Architectural Hostility Became Transparent [Failed Architecture]

“Local governments, commentators assert, use a variety of methods to prohibit certain communities’ access to public space. Designing, inventing and constructing objects that deter specific sets of behaviour. Usually targeting marginalized communities, hostile architecture has been accused of reinforcing questionable social boundaries, tackling serious urban issues with arbitrary measures. Obviously authorities are not often eager to publicize their use of the built environment as a means to resolve municipal problems, and hostile architecture is purposely designed to appear unremarkable, often concealed behind mundane or apparently aesthetic aspects of the urban landscape.”

- Interview with Factory Furniture Design Team [Unpleasant Design]:

UNPLEASANT DESIGN: In your opinion, to which extent can design help us in fighting crime or terrorism? We are fascinated with this idea that crime or unwanted behaviour can be simply designed out. Is design really that powerful?
FACTORY FURNITURE: Design is a tool like any other skill and when used correctly can address challenging situations and problems in the environment. It depends on how persistent the offender is, but if you want to stop unwanted behavioural problems then the Camden bench and the way it was addressed was a good start.
UNPLEASANT DESIGN: The Camden bench is described as an “inclusive design” at the Design Council website. The way we understand this is that by preventing problematic behaviours, the bench allows more people to use it and the space around it. In this respect, homeless people would, for example, exclude others from using the bench. How do you think we should include homeless people in our cities?
FACTORY FURNITURE: Homelessness should never be tolerated in any society and if we start designing in to accommodate homeless then we have totally failed as a society. Close proximity to homelessness unfortunately makes us uncomfortable so perhaps it is good that we feel that and recognise homelessness as a problem rather than design to accommodate it.

- Photo Gallery of Unepleasant Design [Dismal Garden]

posted by Fizz (20 comments total)

It continues to surprise and infuriate me that in 2016, it is considered OK to overtly hate on homeless people.
posted by splitpeasoup at 9:05 AM on September 3, 2016 [19 favorites]

Not to mention the practice of setting sprinklers to go off in the middle of the night to douse unsuspecting sleepers in cold water, which one San Francisco church did.

Just like Jesus would!
posted by LindsayIrene at 9:15 AM on September 3, 2016 [14 favorites]

Homelessness should never be tolerated in any society

I agree completely.

and if we start designing in to accommodate homeless then we have totally failed as a society.

Fuck you.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:56 AM on September 3, 2016 [23 favorites]

setting sprinklers to go off in the middle of the night

Do we know that this was done specifically to be evil? In California you're only ever supposed to run sprinklers in the middle of the night, to minimize evaporation (there's a drought you know). It's been that way since at least the '80s.
posted by heatherlogan at 10:10 AM on September 3, 2016 [13 favorites]

and if we start designing in to accommodate homeless then we have totally failed as a society.

I took that as meaning that, in their opinion, if we're in a position to need homeless accommodations in public spaces, then we've already failed, as that shouldn't be the solution to this particular problem. Which I'd agree with; the fact that the safety net against homelessness is so thin as to be nonexistent seems to be one of the biggest failures of our society. Making park benches wide enough to sleep on is a stupid way to address homelessness.

That said, I'm definitely not comfortable with the situation we have currently where the homeless are pushed aside as public spaces are made less accommodating for them while nothing is done about the homelessness problem itself.
posted by Aleyn at 10:14 AM on September 3, 2016 [13 favorites]

They don't have a legitimate opinion. That particular group of designers are ethical morons who have been highly criticized in the media, and their rebuttal that the public should not "accommodate" homeless "behavior" (huge clue: they're "behavioralists", part of the anti-science "evidenced-based" faction of the UK state apparatus) is their way of weaseling out of the actual criticism. Articulation of the critique is easily found on google and I won't bother repeating the problematics in full.

Hostile design "accommodates" the private, corporate, neo-liberal structures of society and is fundamentally destructive to the public good. In a neo-liberal world, every buzzword means the opposite. "Inclusive" means "ostracise", "accommodate" means "privilege the state", "behavior" means "don't think about things". Etc.

Look, I get that most architects and designers are just intellectual laborers; they have families to feed or whatever, and don't have the "luxury" to access serious architectural ideas and issues. But when they publicly spew shit philosophy and shittier social mores, that's when I draw the line and have to speak up and scrutinize what exactly they're still trying to achieve here.
posted by polymodus at 11:15 AM on September 3, 2016 [8 favorites]

It continues to surprise and infuriate me that in 2016, it is considered OK to overtly hate on homeless people.

Some think it's because they are not being registered as people.
posted by cotton dress sock at 11:29 AM on September 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

Homelessness should never be tolerated in any society and if we start designing in to accommodate homeless then we have totally failed as a society. Close proximity to homelessness unfortunately makes us uncomfortable so perhaps it is good that we feel that and recognise homelessness as a problem rather than design to accommodate it.

Correct. We have failed as a society.

You're a designer. Fix it.

To start, how about finding ways to help the neediest people in our society find comfort and some semblance of a humane lifestyle? If a bench to sleep on can provide them with such a basic decency, imagine how much you could do for our homeless if you tried to give them something nice?
posted by rorgy at 11:41 AM on September 3, 2016

as a culture, we need to embrace POSIWID. it's the only way out of this maze of fucked up intention and subtle - even unconcious - bullshit.

According to the cybernetician, the purpose of a system is what it does. This is a basic dictum. It stands for bald fact, which makes a better starting point in seeking understanding than the familiar attributions of good intention, prejudices about expectations, moral judgment, or sheer ignorance of circumstances. - Stafford Beer
[my bold, ed.]

If it's not doing what it's supposed to, you did it wrong. you thought you designed it for X, and it was actually designed for Y.

see police departments, public transit, most architecture after 1947, park benches, urban planning...
posted by j_curiouser at 11:48 AM on September 3, 2016 [9 favorites]

In California you're only ever supposed to run sprinklers in the middle of the night,

Having grown up in the West, that's when all sprinklers go on, everywhere, for as long as I can remember. Running sprinklers in the daytime is silly.
posted by bongo_x at 11:57 AM on September 3, 2016 [4 favorites]

Do we know that this was done specifically to be evil? In California you're only ever supposed to run sprinklers in the middle of the night, to minimize evaporation (there's a drought you know). It's been that way since at least the '80s.

According to the article linked to by the above-the-fold OP article, these are sprinklers installed in the ceiling above the door portals that people were taking shelter in during the night, and the church admitted that they were installed for this express purpose:

This sprinkler system in alcoves near our back doorways was installed approximately two years ago, after learning from city resources that this kind of system was being commonly used in the Financial District, as a safety, security and cleanliness measure to avoid the situation where needles, feces and other dangerous items were regularly being left in these hidden doorways. The problem was particularly dangerous because students and elderly people regularly pass these locations on their way to school and mass every day.

When the system was installed, after other ideas were tried and failed, the people who were regularly sleeping in those doorways were informed in advance that the sprinklers were being installed. The idea was not to remove those persons, but to encourage them to relocate to other areas of the Cathedral, which are protected and safer. The purpose was to make the Cathedral grounds as well as the homeless people who happen to be on those grounds safer.

They're lucky it wasn't boiling oil.
posted by XMLicious at 12:03 PM on September 3, 2016 [5 favorites]

Robert Moses really was human garbage, wasn't he?
posted by acb at 12:06 PM on September 3, 2016 [6 favorites]

Just wanted to toss in that the 99% Invisible podcast episode is worth a listen. It's not very long but it contains a lot of fascinating information. I made this post primarily because of that episode. And it has me thinking a lot about how things are designed in public spaces. I find myself actively looking at the ways in which my city has been designed. Even something as seemingly benign as a lack of a sidewalk has large implications on how people live on a day to day basis.
posted by Fizz at 12:17 PM on September 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

The issue seems to be partially that there really aren't top level fixes to homelessness, so you've come down to individuals trying to deal with the symptoms of homelessness.
posted by Ferreous at 12:45 PM on September 3, 2016 [5 favorites]

the purpose of a system is what it does

Or the old "we know your intentions based on results" idea ; often abused but really useful e.g. recent voting rights findings.
I notice how little anyone - least of all Google - has worked to make the wonderfully "designy" smartphones legible to the exploding population of android users who need reading glasses to answer a phone call.
I use this and accept the ridicule, though it seems shameful to have to buy or create such a tool that ought to be cooked in.
Why do they hate me?
posted by Alter Cocker at 1:04 PM on September 3, 2016

Victor Papanek wrote that as a designer, you are responsible for what you put into the world.

"We're fighting crime and terrorism with our shitty ideas" is probably not what he had in mind.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 2:50 PM on September 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

I notice how little anyone - least of all Google - has worked to make the wonderfully "designy" smartphones legible to the exploding population of android users who need reading glasses to answer a phone call.
I use this and accept the ridicule, though it seems shameful to have to buy or create such a tool that ought to be cooked in.

I am confused. If no one is accommodating your needs, how does the app that you linked to exist?

Is the problem that your preferences are not the default?
posted by sparklemotion at 6:21 PM on September 3, 2016

Metafilter: fighting crime and terrorism with our shitty ideas
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:03 PM on September 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

Going back to whether we should accommodate homelessness, I feel this is where Slacktivist would be shouting "overlapping magisteria" a lot. We have to solve homelessness on a whole bunch of levels, and building architecture that not only doesn't try to help homeless people (like the interesting shelter benches in another MeFi post), but actively makes things harder is not some coincidence.

I could imagine a protest by people who were homeless actively rejecting these solutions as inadequate by refusing to use benches, etc and camping out on the city steps, but that's pretty seriously different than actively taking away some minimum level of usability. There's a pretty damn big difference between"we don't accept these options" and "you aren't welcome here" they seem to be pretending are the same.
posted by lorimt at 6:33 PM on September 4, 2016

Sparklemotion, a separate app to increase text size isn't needed for iOS devices, it's part of the standard settings. Same deal with Windows desktop, and I believe on Windows mobile too.
posted by harriet vane at 4:03 AM on September 5, 2016