I didn’t want to disrupt the post about hostile architecture I saw because it’s true that the main target is homeless people but I did want to mention that this architecture also hurts people who aren’t skinny. I want to preface this all by saying I am in no way trying to minimize how this impacts people experiencing homelessness I am just trying to add on to the discussion of how these are bad.
You think that someone who can’t fit into those weird little yellow seats is going to feel comfortable? No. It will only make them feel bad or excluded.
Look at this shit. It’s not good or nice.
It only adds to the ways fat people are made feel unwelcome and though we already needed to tear this shit down because it makes life a million times worse for people experiencing homelessness and so this isn’t saying this is why you should tear it down. It is saying that our society is fatphobic and that sucks.
This isn’t a side effect, hostile architecture is designed to drive EVERYONE who’s “undesirable” from public spaces. Homeless people are the biggest targets but also disabled people, fat people, elderly people, etc. Other things, like anti-“loitering” measures and increased presence of police and security, drive out even more people, especially people of color and teenagers.
You aren’t disrupting or derailing discussions by talking about your experiences, we NEED to talk about the ways that different kinds of people are declared “unwanted” and pushed out of society.
Yeah, we no longer have “ugly laws” on paper, but in practice and architecture, we still absolutely do. If anything, we’ve gotten worse and more hostile towards “ugly” (unhoused, disabled, fat, etc) people in the past ten years- and this is exacerbated in the USA especially by the way communities are built to be car-dependent and segregated by class and race.
