The Alienation of Public Spaces by the Homeless

Since the 1970s, German researchers have turned their back on the topic of homelessness. As a result, Germany has neither a universal definition, nor an official statistic on the amount of homeless people living in the country.

Today, most German cities are facing a significant lack of affordable housing. Additionally, the borders of the EU have been opened towards Eastern Europe (2004 and 2007). In the hope of jobs and wealth, Eastern Europeans flock to Germany. However, a lot of them fail to fulfill their dreams and end up homeless as they are not eligible for German welfare. Hence, the number of homeless people being visible on the public spaces of German cities increased constantly in recent years.

As the cities are afraid that the ascending presence of homeless people constricts the consumer climate (especially in pedestrian and representative areas), they are seeing themselves forced to act. In contrast to the USA, where the cities usually follow a containment strategy, the method of choice in Germany is the displacement and decentralization of the homeless. During my presentation, I would like to focus on one of the most subtle ways to achieve these goals: structural modifications and installations which aim to prevent the “alienation” of public spaces by the homeless and other undesirable groups. I would like to complement my remarks with a discussion on how these actions are being implemented and justified by the cities and why people who do not belong to the “target group” are not able to decode their function.

People say that public spaces are a reflection of the society. The stepwise exclusion of unwanted persons from public spaces not only creates a distorted picture of the reality; it also calls a fundamental characteristic of modern democracy into question. We are talking about participation.