These are called "anti-homeless spikes." They're about as friendly as they sound. As you may have guessed, they're intended to deter people who are homeless from sitting or sleeping on that concrete step. And yeah, they're pretty awful. The spikes are a prime example of how cities design spaces to keep homeless people away.Of course, these designs do nothing to fight the cause or problem of homelessness. They're just a way of saying to homeless people, "Go somewhere else. We don't want to look at you," basically.
One particular set of spikes was outside a former night club in London. And a local group got sick of staring at them. Leah Borromeo is part of the art collective "Space, Not Spikes" — a group that's fed up with what she describes as "hostile architecture.Spikes do nothing more than shoo the realities of poverty and inequality away from your backyard — so you don't have to see it or confront what you can do to make things more equal," Borromeo told Upworthy. "And that is really selfish. Our moral compass is skewed if we think things like this are acceptable."