Design, Security, and the Urban Crisis: Reflections on Homelessness in Los Angeles
On my recent trip to Los Angeles, one of the most difficult things to ignore was not just the architecture but the homelessness that seemed to touch every corner of the city. From Santa Monica to Little Tokyo to Hollywood, it became clear that this crisis is not concentrated in a single district like Skid Row it is spread across the entire urban fabric. The tents, makeshift shelters, and people living directly on sidewalks made it unavoidable. Experiencing this as an architecture student forced me to confront not only the scale of the problem but also the ways the built environment shapes how we respond to it.
The Illusion of Security
What struck me most was how often the city attempted to create “security” by putting up fences or gates. Public libraries wrapped in chain link barriers, civic plazas edged with hostile architecture, and underpasses lined with deterrents. These moves may temporarily keep people out, but they don’t create real safety. If anything, they send the message that public space is no longer for the public. A library, for example, should be one of the most open and civic-minded spaces in a city, but when you surround it with fences, it feels less like a place of learning and more like a site of control.
The Psychology of Neglect
Walking through LA, I also noticed how neglect multiplies. When streets are dirty, when sidewalks smell of urine, when broken infrastructure goes unfixed, people quickly stop taking pride in their surroundings. Trash piles up faster, vandalism spreads, and a herd mentality takes over. The environment signals how it should be treated. Once pride and identity are stripped away from a street, it’s incredibly hard to bring them back. This is not unique to Los Angeles, but the scale of it there made the effect almost overwhelming.
Public Space and Civic Identity
This is why public spaces matter so much. They are not just gaps between buildings, they are the shared rooms of the city. A well designed plaza, park, or transit stop can anchor civic pride, even in neighborhoods struggling with poverty or neglect. Conversely, when those spaces are abandoned or barricaded, they accelerate decline. The built environment has a direct influence on whether people feel connected to their city or alienated from it.
Designing Secure but Welcoming Spaces
For me, the biggest lesson was that security and openness are not opposites. Good design can do both. Light filled sidewalks, active street edges, visible gathering spaces, and thoughtful programming can all make streets feel safer without turning them into fortresses. These strategies can also restore dignity offering spaces where the homeless are not treated as invisible, while giving residents and visitors confidence in their environment. Security done through design should make places more human, not less.
An Architectural Responsibility
Homelessness is not a problem that design can solve on its own, but architecture and planning are part of the response. As architects, we have to think about both populations: the people experiencing homelessness and the people living next to it every day. If we design only to push one group away, we fail both. Our responsibility is to imagine cities where pride, safety, and dignity coexist and where public spaces reflect a sense of shared ownership instead of division.
Traveling through Los Angeles reminded me that the built environment is never neutral. It communicates values. A fence communicates exclusion. A welcoming plaza communicates belonging. For me, that was the most sobering realization: when a city loses pride in its public spaces, it also loses a piece of its civic identity. As a student on path to become an architect, I want to keep questioning how design can resist that cycle and instead foster places where people feel connected, secure, and seen.
