UCLA

In this dissertation, I explore the expansion of hostile designs as conceptualized zones of anti-homelessness and the production of do-it-yourself urban design interventions as tactical responses (i.e., community infrastructure and mutual aid services)—employing mapping, photography, and conversations with unhoused residents in Los Angeles. Historically, scholars have investigated the criminalization of homelessness, achieved through the enforcement of anti-homeless ordinances and the spatial banishment of unhouse individuals. Less study has gone to hostile regulations and spatial design conditions in shelter spaces and public spaces that shrink the capabilities of unhoused individuals to access bare necessities, partake in life-sustaining activities, and realize socio-spatial rights to the city and its public spaces. To intervene in this gap, I review an emerging suite of strategies—quality-of-life ordinances, spatial policing, and hostile soft and hard design controls—that exist across Los Angeles’ anti-homeless landscape. Across four neighborhoods, I interviewed 36 unhoused individuals to understand their experiences with anti-homeless zones and responses to hostile designs within shelters and in public spaces. Additionally, I catalogued the grassroots construction from the part of unhoused individuals of residential and community infrastructure. My key argument is that hostile designs encourage and, ultimately, criminalize and demolish DIY urban design interventions that seek to respond to conditions of homelessness. Hostile designs across shelters and public spaces shrink the socio-spatial rights of unhoused residents to access public spaces and realize capabilities allowing them to partake in life-sustaining activities. I advance the concept of “dwellable inhabitance,” which is a capability afforded through regulation and urban design that allows individuals to appropriate public space so that they can partake in life-sustaining activities when no accessible or reasonable alternatives exist. Here, I critique the processes and outcomes of hostile designs that reproduce homelessness, as experienced by unhoused residents and their DIY urban design responses. Then, grounded in the recommendations and demands of unhoused residents, I suggest how hostile designs can be transformed into just public space designs. My suggested policy and design recommendations follow an inclusive justice framework that addresses distributive, procedural, interactional, recognitional aspects of justice, and care and repair considerations. Instead of fencing off parks, closing public restrooms, and criminalizing non-criminal activities like sleeping, cooking, or hanging out, I advocate for the abolition of hostile designs to render public spaces in LA more socially, politically, and spatially accessible places that provide compassionate services and opportunities for housing.