City

While the initial invitation to imagine, and indeed live in, ‘a city that felt like a living, breathing thing which belonged to everybody’ might seem a welcome one to most people, it might seem like a nightmare to others once they grasp the possibility that in such a city the walls could be wet with an abundance of graffiti and street art. What, it might be asked, would happen to the décor and decorum of such a city? Would not only the estate agents and big business barons but also their ideologues, the proponents of ‘zero tolerance’ and gentrification feel threatened? Such questions need to be addressed, Kurt Iveson notes in his Introduction to our feature on Graffiti, Street Art and the City, ‘as “the street” assumes renewed strategic significance for emerging social control efforts, for corporate branding strategies, and for radical politics.’ The city is already undergoing various and contending struggles for appropriation and re-appropriation, then, how are we to contribute to understanding and action in a way that, instead of uncritically and myopically describing the problem mainly in terms acceptable to those who principally benefit from it, seeks to contribute to a socially inclusive solution ?