The Olympics’ Hostile Architecture Is a Preview of What’s to Come

On a graffiti-stained sidewalk in Paris, an odd sight appeared days earlier than the Olympic opening ceremony in July: Round 40 big cement Lego-like blocks in neat rows beneath the Pont de Stains, a bridge within the northern suburb of Aubervilliers that connects two Olympic websites, the Stade de France and the Parc des Nations.

This place was a homeless encampment, the place round 100 folks, a lot of them migrants, lived in tents. Then on July 17, the police arrived and instructed everyone to leave, as a part of a cleanup operation wherein authorities put homeless folks, members of the Roma neighborhood, migrants, and intercourse employees on buses to different cities, akin to Bordeaux or Toulouse.

As soon as the authorities emptied the world, in response to activists, the immovable blocks of concrete had been put in instead of the tents, ending any notion the previous residents might someday be capable of return.

Campaigners say these bricks are an instance of hostile structure, a time period used to explain a number of the most seen modifications cities and firms make to discourage homeless folks loitering or sleeping on their properties. “This isn’t new, nevertheless it has been intensified in a really particular approach in the course of the Olympics,” says Antoine de Clerck, a part of Le Revers de la Médaille, a gaggle of activists elevating consciousness of how marginalized individuals are handled in the course of the Olympic Video games.

“We don’t advocate for encampments and squats and shantytowns,” provides de Clerck. “However to eradicate them, you need to discover various long-term options.”

Regardless of different examples of hostile structure in Paris, together with picnic tables put in the place folks used to sleep, it’s the big Lego-style blocks which have proved most controversial. “I haven’t seen something fairly like this,” says Jules Boykoff, a professor and former skilled soccer participant who research the influence of the Olympics on marginalized communities. “Sometimes, hostile structure is extra delicate,” he says, “like a curved bus bench that makes it much less snug for any person to sleep.”