2025/08/19 by Maryam Aldoori, Sina Kuzuoglu, Troy D. Glover · 1 voice · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Spatial and Cultural Studies #Urban Planning and Governance #Urbanization and City Planning
paper · doi:10.1080/01490400.2025.2547779
published in Leisure Sciences, 1-15 (Informa UK Limited)
crossref issued 2025/08/19 · crossref published 2025/08/19 · crossref published-online 2025/08/19 · openalex publication_date 2025/08/19 · crossref created 2025/08/19 · crossref deposited 2025/08/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/14 · crossref indexed 2026/08/04
Defensive architecture refers to strategic use of design elements to limit access and to modify behavior by changing the affordances of (public) spaces. This practice often disproportionately affects marginalized communities like underhoused individuals or youth subcultures by influencing their modes of participation in public life of cities. In this way, defensive architecture effectively shapes ingroups, outgroups, and the possible and permissible behaviors in spaces of leisure. This conceptual paper situates defensive architecture within the broader construct of placemaking in urban contexts and, using concrete examples, constructs a spectrum of perceptibility for defensive placemaking ranging from overt to covert. Such measures and urban inhabitants’ subjective understandings of and interactions with them add a layer of fluidity to the differentiation between ingroups and outgroups. Building on this multilayered nature of defensive placemaking, the paper calls for a holistic approach in evaluating its role in leisure settings, and advocates for a paradigm shift from defensive to adaptive placemaking in which the design focus shifts from rigid design elements with high exclusionary potentials toward prioritizing multiple affordances that foster diverse uses and user groups. In this context, implications for practitioners and policymakers as well as future research directions for leisure scholars are introduced.