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ArtistA modern, colorful manga-style comic panel with clean, confident linework, expressive chibi-influenced proportions, and flat, softly luminous colors with gentle cel shading. The tone is sober, empathetic, and quietly accusatory, aimed at exposing cruelty disguised as design. Dialogue appears in a simple, perfectly legible rounded comic font. Single-panel composition. Top caption, centered inside the panel: Hostile Architecture Setting: An urban sidewalk in a contemporary city. In the foreground, a clear example of hostile architecture: a public bench divided by rigid metal armrests, making it impossible to lie down. Cold materials—steel and concrete—contrast with neutral, overcast daylight. The surrounding space is otherwise ordinary: a bus stop sign, a storefront window, a trash bin. Nothing dramatic—just normalized exclusion. Foreground characters: Two people stand close together, facing the bench. Left character (him): A slim, athletic man with almost shaved hair, glasses, and a warm Mediterranean complexion. He wears an orange T-shirt and short beige trekking shorts. Barefoot or in simple sandals. He leans slightly forward, arm extended as he points at the bench. His expression is openly horrified: brows knitted, mouth slightly open, jaw tense. His posture conveys disbelief and moral outrage rather than anger. Dialogue (him, stunned and indignant): “How can someone deliberately make life even harder for the most unfortunate among us?” Right character (her, with colored hair): A woman with green eyes and vividly colored hair in saturated, expressive tones, styled neatly and confidently. She wears a cropped tank top and loose, colorful hip-hop style pants. Standing beside him, shoulders slightly slumped, she looks at the bench with sadness rather than shock. One hand rests loosely against her side; the other folds lightly across her stomach. Her expression is heavy and sincere, eyes softened with quiet grief. Dialogue (her, saddened and sincere): “I swear, I just can’t wrap my head around it.” Interaction & visual language: His pointing gesture draws the viewer’s eye directly to the hostile design. Her subdued posture tempers his shock with shared sorrow. The bench is centered enough to be unmistakable, but the emotional focus stays on their reaction. No motion lines; the condemnation is calm, not explosive. Mood: Moral clarity without theatrics. Compassion confronting cruelty that has been normalized by design. Bottom caption, centered inside the panel: © Emiliano Girina
Hostile architecture is cruelty with a blueprint. Benches designed so no one can lie down, spikes where someone might rest, ledges shaped to repel bodies rather than welcome them. These are not neutral design choices; they are moral decisions cast in steel and concrete.
From an urban point of view, this is lazy planning. It doesn’t solve homelessness, poverty, or mental health—it just pushes them out of sight, fragmenting public space into zones of permission and exclusion. A city that designs against people is a city admitting it has run out of ideas.
Ethically, it’s worse. Hostile architecture treats vulnerability as a defect to be engineered away. It replaces care with deterrence, empathy with inconvenience. When public space becomes a test of worthiness, we’ve quietly agreed that comfort is a privilege and rest is suspicious.
Cities should be tools for living together, not machines for sorting the “deserving” from the “undeserving.” Design can shelter, invite, and repair—or it can punish. Hostile architecture makes its choice clear.
#DiversitySaturday
