Defensive architecture: keeping poverty unseen and deflecting our guilt:

Defensive architecture is revealing on a number of levels, because it is not the product of accident or thoughtlessness, but a thought process. It is a sort of unkindness that is considered, designed, approved, funded and made real with the explicit motive to exclude and harass. It reveals how corporate hygiene has overridden human considerations, especially in retail districts. It is a symptom of the clash of private and public, of necessity and property.

Pavement sprinklers have been installed by buildings as diverse as the famous Strand book store in New York, a fashion chain in Hamburg and government offices in Guangzhou. They spray the homeless intermittently, soaking them and their possessions. The assertion is clear: the public thoroughfare in front of a building, belongs to the building's occupant, even when it is not being used. [...]

Defensive architecture acts as the airplane curtain that separates economy from business and business from first class, protecting those further forward from the envious eyes of those behind. It keeps poverty unseen and sanitises our shopping centres, concealing any guilt for over-consuming. It speaks volumes about our collective attitude to poverty in general and homelessness in particular. It is the aggregated, concrete, spiked expression of a lack of generosity of spirit.

Ironically, it doesn't even achieve its basic goal of making us feel safer. There is no way of locking others out that doesn't also lock us in. The narrower the arrow-slit, the larger outside dangers appear. Making our urban environment hostile breeds hardness and isolation. It makes life a little uglier for all of us.

Lots of good stuff at the Dismal Garden gallery (I think this is what used to be the "Anti-Sit archives" -- many of the photos look similar, anyway.)

And, one of my favorite background gags from Transmetropolitan, 1999. It took me a little while to dig these out. Can you believe that these images aren't googleable?

"Warning: This bench becomes red-hot between 1 AM and 7 AM. No sleeping."

"This bench releases level 8 virus 10 PM - 6 AM."

"Warning: Writing graffiti on these walls will induce a chemical spray causing blindness."