Law and hostile design in the city
Imposing decorum and visibility regimes in the urban environment
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl/0000-0000-0000-1306Keywords:
Hostile design, law and urban objects, decorum, visibility regimes, right to the cityAbstract
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.
Downloads
Metrics
Downloads:
PDF_12_3_Nitrato_Izzo_OSLS 2049
XML_12_3_Nitrato_Izzo_OSLS 1085
References
Auby, J.B., 2013. Droit de la ville: Du fonctionnement juridique des villes au droit à la Ville. Paris: LexisNexis.
Bauman, Z., 2005. Fiducia e paura nella città. Milan: Bruno Mondadori.
Bernardini, M.G., and Giolo, O., 2021. Introduzione. Dalla critica del soggetto alla critica degli spazi. In: M.G. Bernardini and O. Giolo, eds., Abitare i diritti: Per una critica del rapporto tra giustizia e spazi urbani. Pisa: Pacini, 7–15.
Blank, Y., and Rosen-Zvi, I., 2010. The Spatial Turn in Legal Theory. HAGAR: Studies in Culture, Polity & Identities, 10(1), 37–60.
Blomley, N., 2008. Making Space for Law. In: K.R. Cox, M. Low and J. Robinson, eds., The Sage Handbook of Political Geography. London: Sage, 155–168.
Branco, P., 2019. City/Courthouse Building: A Mirror Game. Examining Connections Between Courthouse Buildings and Location in the Urban Environment. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 32, 597–620.
Bukovski, W., 2019. La buona educazione degli oppressi: Piccola storia del decoro. Rome: Alegre.
Butler, J., 2015. Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Dal Lago, A., and Giordano, S., 2018. Sporcare i muri: Graffiti, decoro, proprietà privata. Rome: Derive Approdi.
Davis, M., 1990. City of Quartz: Excavating the future in Los Angeles. New York: Vintage Books.
de Fine Licht, K., 2020. “Hostile architecture” and its confederates: A conceptual framework for how we should perceive our cities and the objects in them. Canadian Journal of Urban Research [online], 29(2), 1–17. Available from: https://cjur.uwinnipeg.ca/index.php/cjur/article/download/290/145/ [Accessed 26 April 2022].
Duneier, M., 2000. Sidewalk. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Flusty, S., 1994. Building Paranoia: The Proliferation of Interdictory Space and the Erosion of Spatial Justice. Los Angeles Public Library.
Foucault, M., 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Random House.
Fuller, L., 1958. Positivism and Fidelity to Law: A Reply to Professor Hart. Harvard Law Review, 1(4), 630–672.
Gerrard, J., and Farrugia, D., 2015, The “lamentable sight” of homelessness and the society of the spectacle. Urban Studies [online], 52(12), 2219–2233. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098014542135 [Accessed 26 April 2022].
Grigolo, M., 2019. The Human Rights City: New York, San Francisco, Barcelona. New York/Oxon: Routledge.
Joyce, P., 2003. The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City. London/New York: Verso Books.
Kang, H.Y, and Kendall, S., 2020. Legal Materiality. In: M. Del Mar, B. Meyler and S. Stern, eds., Oxford Handbook for Law and the Humanities. Oxford University Press.
Katyal, N.K., 2002. Architecture as Crime Control. Yale Law Journal, 111(5), 1039–1139.
Klinenberg, E., 2018. Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life. London: Penguin.
Lefebvre, H., 1991. The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell.
Lessig, L., 1999. Code and other laws of cyberspace. New York: Basic Books.
Lieto, L., 2017. How material objects become urban things? City, 21(5), 568–579.
Lorini, G., and Moroni, S., 2020. Ruling without Rules: Not Only Nudges. Regulation beyond Normativity. Global Jurist, 20(3), 2020.
Macherey, P., 2009. De Canguilhem à Foucault, la force des normes. Paris: Fabrique.
Massey, D., 2005. For Space. London: Sage.
Mitchell, D., 2003. The right to the city: Social justice and the fight for public space. New York/London: Guildford Press.
Mohr, R., 2019. Urban space and collective action: The city as a site of enactment and denial of rights [online]. Draft Paper. 17 August. Available from: https://www.academia.edu/40114346/Urban_space_and_collective_action_The_city_as_a_site_of_enactment_and_denial_of_rights [Accessed 26 April 2022].
Moroni, S., and Chiodelli, F., 2014. Municipal regulations and the use of public space: local ordinances in Italy. City, Territory and Architecture [online], 1(11), 1–7. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1186/2195-2701-1-11 [Accessed 26 April 2022].
Mubi Brighenti, A., 2010. Visibility in Social Theory and Social Research. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Nitrato Izzo, V., 2017. Gli spazi giuridici della città contemporanea: Rappresentazioni e pratiche. Naples: Editoriale Scientifica.
Oomen, B., Davis, M.F., and Grigolo, M., eds., 2016. Global Urban Justice. The Rise of Human Rights Cities. London: Cambridge University Press.
Petty, J., 2016. The London spikes controversy: homelessness, urban securitisation and the question of “hostile architecture“. International journal for crime, justice and social democracy [online], 5(1), 67–81. Available from: https://doi.org/10.5204/ijcjsd.v5i1.286 [Accessed 26 April 2022].
Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, A., 2015. Spatial justice: Body, Lawscape, Atmosphere. London: Routledge.
Pitch, T., 2013. Contro il decoro: L’uso politico della pubblica decenza. Rome/Bari: Laterza.
Quinn, B., 2014. Anti-homeless spikes are part of a wider phenomenon of “hostile architecture“. The Guardian [online], 13 June. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/jun/13/anti-homeless-spikes-hostile-architecture [Accessed 26 April 2022].
Rancière, J., 2000. Le Partage du sensible : Esthétique et politique. Paris: La fabrique.
Rosenberger, R., 2017. Callous objects: Designs against the Homeless. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Rosenberger, R., 2020. On hostile design: Theoretical and empirical prospects. Urban Studies, 57(4), 883–893.
Sassen, S., 2014. Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Savičić, G., and Savić, S., eds., 2013. Unpleasant Design. Belgrade: G.L.O.R.I.A.
Savicic, G., and Savic, S., no date. Interview with Factory Furniture Design Team: On benefits of Unpleasant Design. Un.pleas.ant de.sign [online]. Available from: https://unpleasant.pravi.me/interview-with-factory-furniture-design-team/ [Accessed 26 April 2022].
Schindler, S., 2015. Architectural Exclusion: Discrimination and Segregation Through Physical Design of the Built Environment. Yale Law Journal [online], 124(6), 1934–2024. Available from: https://www.yalelawjournal.org/article/architectural-exclusion [Accessed 26 April 2022].
Sennett, R., 2018. Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City. London: Allen Lane.
Sudjic, D., 2016. The Language of Cities. London: Allen Lane.
Valverde, M., 2009. Laws of the Street. City & Society, 21(2),163–181.
Volcler, J., 2011. Le son comme arme : Les usages policiers et militaires du son. Paris: La Découverte.
Waldron, J., 1991. Homelessness and the issue of freedom. UCLA Law Review, 39(2), 295–324.
Winner, L., 1980. Do Artifacts Have Politics? Daedalus, 109(1), 121–36.
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Valerio Nitrato Izzo
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
OSLS strictly respects intellectual property rights and it is our policy that the author retains copyright, and articles are made available under a Creative Commons licence. The Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution No-Derivatives licence is our default licence, further details available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 If this is not acceptable to you, please contact us.
The non-exclusive permission you grant to us includes the rights to disseminate the bibliographic details of the article, including the abstract supplied by you, and to authorise others, including bibliographic databases, indexing and contents alerting services, to copy and communicate these details.
For information on how to share and store your own article at each stage of production from submission to final publication, please read our Self-Archiving and Sharing policy.
The Copyright Notice showing the author and co-authors, and the Creative Commons license will be displayed on the article, and you must agree to this as part of the submission process. Please ensure that all co-authors are properly attributed and that they understand and accept these terms.
