Rough justice

Why did that picture of anti-homeless spikes get such prominence on Twitter and in the media over the weekend?

Here is the tweet from Anglican priest Sally Hitchiner that sparked an angry wave of Twitter reaction and follow-up stories in the national press.



What she called studs, but look to many other people like spikes, do indeed send a very negative message. Many people have noted the resemblance to anti-pigeon measures on London buildings. And Katharine Sacks-Jones of Crisis points out that there are just one part of a rough tale for rough sleepers. ‘We will never end homelessness with studs in the pavement – only by tackling the root causes,’ she points out.

Yet for all those powerful arguments, anti-homeless urban design is sadly not new or unusual. There have been previous furores in Britain, notably involving Tesco, and there are much worse examples in other cities around the world.


3 Comments on “Rough justice”

  1. beastrabban says:

    Reblogged this on Beastrabban’s Weblog and commented:
    Jules Birch in the linked article, from which this is an extract, talks about the proliferation of such devices in the cities around the world, like Chicago, Paris and Tokyo, to prevent rough sleeping. He connects them to the ‘Spike’, the term for local authority dormitories for homeless men, and asks what this street furniture has to say about our attitudes to the homeless, and if it’s a return to the dark days of the Vagrancy Act.

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