On a graffiti-covered sidewalk in Paris, a strange sight emerged days before the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in July: about 40 giant, Lego-like cement blocks arranged in neat rows beneath the Pont de Stains, a bridge in the northern suburb of Aubervilliers that connects the two Olympic venues, the Stade de France and the Parc des Nations.
The place was once a homeless camp where about 100 people, many of them migrants, lived in tents. July 17ththe police arrived and he ordered everyone to leaveas part of a clean-up operation in which authorities are housing homeless people, members of the Roma community, migrants and sex workers on buses to other cities such as Bordeaux or Toulouse.
When authorities cleared the site, activists say they replaced the tents with immovable concrete blocks, ending any notion that the former residents might one day return.
Activists say the bricks are examples of hostile architecture, a term used to describe some of the most noticeable changes that cities and businesses make to discourage homeless people from loitering or sleeping on their properties. “It’s nothing new, but it’s been exacerbated in a very specific way during the Olympics,” says Antoine de Clerck, a member of Le Revers de la Médaille, an activist group that raises awareness of how marginalized people are treated during the Olympics.
“We are not in favor of camps, shelters and slums,” de Clerck adds. “But to eradicate them, we need to find alternative, long-term solutions.”
Despite other examples of hostile architecture in Paris, including picnic tables installed where people once slept, it was the giant Lego-style blocks that proved the most controversial. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” says Jules Boykoff, a professor and former professional soccer player who studies the impact of the Olympics on marginalized communities. “Usually, hostile architecture is more subtle,” he says, “like a curved bus bench that makes it more uncomfortable to sleep.”
A luxury housing complicated has installed spikes and scratchy surfaces to deter homeless people from sleeping near the Limehouse Basin marina in London, UKPhotographer: Julio Etchart/ullstein Photo via Getty Images