Direito à cidade e arquitetura hostil: análises a partir de Uberlândia/MG

Abstract

This study investigates the practice of hostile architecture and its implications for the right to the city, with a particular focus on its impact on social inclusion and access to urban space. The empirical scope centers on the southern zone of Uberlândia, in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Hostile architecture is understood as a set of deliberate physical interventions—such as the installation of uncomfortable benches, metal barriers, spiked surfaces, and other devices— designed to deter specific social groups deemed undesirable, especially individuals experiencing homelessness. These practices are rooted in aporophobia, the aversion to poverty and the public presence of the poor. They reflect an urban planning strategy aimed at the sanitization of public spaces and the production of a selective city, where sociability is governed by socioeconomic and aesthetic criteria. Based on an analysis of urban dynamics in Uberlândia’s southern zone, this study proposes a broader conceptualization of hostile architecture—one that includes practices not traditionally labeled as such, but which similarly contribute to socio-spatial exclusion. These include the construction of walls, the proliferation of electronic surveillance systems, and the adoption of private security strategies. Often legitimized by discourses of security, these practices consolidate mechanisms of separation and reinforce both symbolic and material boundaries between social groups. Although Brazilian law guarantees the right to the city, as well as dignity and equality, such forms of segregation persist and even intensify, particularly through private initiatives tied to real estate speculation and the reproduction of market logics. These practices contradict constitutional principles and operate as mechanisms that deny the urban space as a democratic sphere, undermining the ideal of the city as a common good and deepening socio-spatial inequalities. The research adopts a qualitative approach, combining bibliographic review with fieldwork—through direct observation and photographic documentation—to identify and analyze exclusionary urban elements and their effects on everyday urban life. The results indicate that hostile architecture, by promoting the expulsion of the "undesirable" and the exclusionary aestheticization of public spaces, functions as a tool of social control and management of the poor, intensifying inequalities and restricting full access to the city. The study concludes by emphasizing the need for inclusive urban policies committed to sociospatial justice, as well as the strengthening of state regulation over urbanization processes, in order to curb practices that normalize exclusion and deepen socio-spatial divisions.