Defending Suburbia: Exploring the Use of Defensive Urban Design Outside of the City Centre

Defensive urban design, also known as hostile, unpleasant, or exclusionary architecture is an intentional designstrategy that uses elements of the built environment to guide or restrict behaviour in urban space as a form ofcrime prevention, protection of property, or order maintenance. It often targets people who use or rely on publicspace more than others, like people who are homeless and youth, by restricting the behaviours they engage in.From benches specially designed to prevent lying down to the addition of elements that are meant to deterskateboarding, forms of defensive design vary according to the behaviour it is intended to restrict. While muchof the current research on the subject privileges the urban centre as the site of research, this paper expands thefocus from the centre to the periphery. Taking two public spaces in Toronto’s inner suburb of North York as astarting point, this paper examines how defensive urban design is used regulate, control, and maintain publicspace outside of the city centre.