Pittsburgh Hostile Architecture

This research project and data takes a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) approach using community collected points, a resource gazetteer for the unhoused, demographical census data, and layouts of public spaces to map the concentration of hostile architecture across the city of Pittsburgh and point out correlations and possible solutions that would best assist often overlooked and excluded communities.

This idea came about when I was learning about the unspoken societal rules of public spaces. Although, at face value, public spaces are meant to be for everyone to enjoy, many groups are frowned upon when using them for personal use that doesn't align with the standards of the larger society. Most often, overlooked groups are members of the unhoused population utilizing public areas as places to sleep, and teenagers and young adults skating and playing around on outside architecture. Even though these acts don't inherently or directly hurt other members of the community, these actions are criticized, rejected, and specifically prohibited with the placement of features of hostile architecture.

Hostile architecture, sometimes also known as anti-homeless architecture, is "the design of public spaces in a way that stops unwanted behavior" deemed bad by societal standards. These groups are typically the unhoused population and younger people. The architecture prevents people from sleeping and remaining in public areas for too long and prohibits activities such as skating on the architecture.

Even though these spaces are considered "public," there are these unspoken rules and restrictions that go against that exact idea and specifically exclude certain people.

The most common features are benches with armrests in the middle or other segmented, slanted, or curved seating. These are used to prevent people from laying or sleeping on them. Inconvenience and the lack of comfortability are key.

Other common hostile architectural features are spikes and metal pieces set on a flat surface to discourage and bar sleeping or laying in the area as well as skating or other sorts of activities.

Barred corners, raised covers over heat grates, and street dividers are all small features that prevent sleeping in public areas. Areas under bridges, along with other open and covered areas ideal for homeless encampments, are often filled with protruding rocks and surfaces to prevent the unhoused from utilizing these semi-protected areas as places to stay and sleep throughout the day.

Since data on hostile architecture features in Pittsburgh didn't previously exist, I utilized Survey123 to crowd-source points. Via social media and personal contacts, I shared the survey to allow for the identification of hostile architectural features through a larger part of the city.

Most of the points (about 230 of them) I collected myself by methodically going street by street in Google Street View and screenshotting any features I could identify. To the right is a map of every road, park, and other area that I canvassed via Google Maps specifically. To maximize my potential of finding various architectural elements that may impact the city's population, I made sure to stick mainly to main roads, public areas, parks, and bus routes while avoiding the more residence-based areas, as hostile architecture is typically found more in completely public areas and streets.

Disclaimer: Due to the crowd-sourced nature of the data points and the general mistake-prone nature of human data collection errors and Google Maps' capabilities, there may be a few mistakes in the data, but they are, for the most part, accurate. Some points may be recorded twice and others may not be 100% accurate to the true architecture in the area. So, while this data is important and useful in tracking the city's impact on public spaces, understand that there may be a few discrepancies or mistakes.

Click on each point to find out what type of hostile architecture it is along with a picture of the feature.

The only way this project is possible is with the help of the community.

As you go about your daily life, try to notice what architectural features around you are made in a hostile manner. If you see one, click on the link above and add in the location, a picture, and what type of hostile architecture the feature is.

Through the use of the GIS toolbox and my analysis of various data, I found that points of hostile architecture are clustered around Pittsburgh's public parks and other public areas.

Swipe between the map of parks with and without the points of hostile architecture to follow the correlation between the two.

The histogram below display the distribution of the points in relation to distance in meters from a public park. The farther you get away from a park area, the less hostile architecture features are present, and the average distance away from a park is only about 179 meters.

I utilized optimized hot spot analysis tool in ArcGIS Pro to point out the clusters of hostile architecture, which seem to be centered around the downtown point area and surrounding neighborhoods.

Downtown, specifically, is filled with open streets, green spaces, and other public gathering environments, hence, the hot spot area of hostile architecture centered in that area.

Along with the downtown area and the surrounding neighborhoods on the north and south sides, hostile architecture is concentrated in the Squirrel Hill, Highland Parks, and campus parts of Oakland.

While the data show some trend, the direct correlation of hostile architecture to the wealth of a neighborhood is not as strong as I hypothesized.

The map to the left displays various resources for the unhoused community, like soup kitchens and pantries, different kinds of temporary and low-income housing, and other sorts of community assistance programs. Click on each individual point to find their contact information and what types of services they offer.

As expected with cities, most of the hostile architecture is located in the downtown area. Fortunately and expectedly, a lot of the resources found are there as well. If you look in the center area of the map around the Oakland and Squirrel Hill neighborhoods, along with parts of the North and South Sides, there are spots of hostile architecture without locations of resources available.

The first step would be to add additional resources to the areas that lack them. Locate specific neighborhoods where the unhoused are typically located but clearly not wanted, and place in various food assistance and temporary housing opportunities.

Housing First is a scheme implemented by cities around the world to house those who aren’t able to afford or secure housing for themselves. The base idea for this is unconditional housing. This means there are no prerequisites or specific criteria people need to meet in order to have access to this affordable or free housing provided by the government. With this, many people in terrible and unforgiving situations like addiction or chronic homelessness are given a chance at a better life. Research shows that having this sort of access to housing and a safe place to land allows people to better “address their individual problems” (Jenson, et. al.) instead of focusing on the basic needs of survival. 

Cities all over the world, from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Vienna, Austria, have used this program to decrease their homelessness population and allow for more opportunities for life improvement. Houston, Texas, specifically saw a 55% decrease in people without stable housing. Unique to their process, they identified similar services that were placed within a small proximity of each other and decided to re-allocate funds to provide a wider range of services. The city of Helsinki, Finland, saw temporary housing as the issue, so they completely got rid of all the short-term relief programs and replaced them with permanent housing solutions through the housing first scheme.

Although an overhaul and complete removal of the existing hostile architecture presented in this research would be an unrealistic undertaking, a ban on future use and placement of these features is doable and necessary. Gavin Martin at the Loyola University School of Law recommends a similar ordinance for the city of Chicago, claiming that active displacement and routine clearing of homeless camps are policies that do nothing to help the unhoused.

In all honesty, clearing hostile architecture from public spaces is the smallest step we can take towards creating a society that allows all access to proper and permanent housing. The above recommendations of a Housing First Scheme and additional resources for the unhoused should be the first priority policies for cities to best reduce the homeless population.

Visit my  website (https://nataliehancher.weebly.com/)  for more of my work