In many cities around the world we are presently witnessing the growth of, and interest in, a range of micro‐spatial urban practices that are reshaping urban spaces. These practices include actions such as: guerrilla and community gardening; housing and retail cooperatives; flash mobbing and other shock tactics; social economies and bartering schemes; ‘empty spaces’ movements to occupy abandoned buildings for a range of purposes; subcultural practices like graffiti/street art, skateboarding and parkour; and more. This article asks: to what extent do such practices constitute a new form of urban politics that might give birth to a more just and democratic city? In answering this question, the article considers these so‐called ‘do‐it‐yourself urbanisms’ from the perspective of the ‘right to the city’. After critically assessing that concept, the article argues that in order for do‐it‐yourself urbanist practices to generate a wider politics of the city through the appropriation of urban space, they also need to assert new forms of authority in the city based on the equality of urban inhabitants. This claim is illustrated through an analysis of the do‐it‐yourself practices of Sydney‐based activist collective BUGA UP and the New York and Madrid Street Advertising Takeovers.
An ever-expanding number of urban authorities have declared 'war' on graffiti. This paper explores the role the wars on graffiti have played in the creeping militarization of everyday life in the city. Wars on graffiti have contributed to the diffusion of military technologies and operational techniques into the realm of urban policy and policing. Furthermore, new Western military doctrines of urban warfare have sought to 'learn lessons' from the wars on graffiti (and other crime) in their efforts to achieve dominance over cities in both the global South and the Western 'homeland'. The blurring of war and policing has deepened with the declaration of wars on terror. The stakes have been raised in urban social control efforts intended to protect communities from threats of 'disorder' such as graffiti, for the existence of even 'minor' infractions is thought to send a message to both 'the community' and 'enemies within' that there are vulnerabilities to be exploited with potentially more devastating consequences. Increasingly, there is a convergence around the notion that situational crime prevention strategies are crucial in combating both graffiti and terror threats, because even if graffiti writers and terrorists don't share the same motivations, they do exploit the same urban vulnerabilities. The paper concludes with a critical reflection on what graffiti writers might be able to teach us about how to evade and/or contest the militarization of urban life. Prelude: bombing the city mong the highlights of Style Wars, the cult 1983 documentary about hip hop culture and graffiti in New York City, are the conversations between teenage graffiti writer SKEME and his mother. As they sit together in their living room, SKEME tells us that: 'I didn't start writing to go to Paris. I didn't start writing to do canvases. I started writing to bomb, destroy all lines. And that's what I'm doing.' His mum rolls her eyes, shakes her head and appeals to the interviewer: 'Now that you've heard that, you understand what I'm saying to you when I say that I don't understand him. He's out there to "bomb", "destroy all lines". What have the lines ever done to him?'For the 20th anniversary of the documentary, director Tony Chalfant tracked down SKEME and his mum for a reunion interview. We find out that on reaching adulthood, SKEME had joined the US Army, and A Downloaded by [Umeå University Library] at 01:08 21 November 2014 116 CITY VOL. 14, NOS. 1-2 had been in it ever since. And as he tells it, his skills as a writer had come in handy as a serviceman: 'It really prepared me for the army, because graffiti was a mission. You had to start with a draft. You had to get your material. Then you had to be dedicated. You couldn't say, "well, I got a piece to do", and then two weeks go by and you never do it. ' We might also speculate on whether SKEME's experiences as a graffiti writer would have come in handy for the new kinds of terrain over which the US military and its allies increasingly seek dominancethe city and its infrastructure. A...
In this paper, we critically review the literature on graffiti and street art with a view to bridging the divide between the stark extremities of public graffiti discourse. We make the case for moving beyond singular responses to the challenges posed by graffiti – into the complex terrain between visions of a city free from graffiti and one where public art has free rein. To this end, we have chosen a series of interrogations of common dialectical positions in talk of graffiti: is it art or crime; is it public or private expression; is it necessarily ephemeral, or does it seek permanence; is it a purely cultural practice, or is it economic? Our list is by no means exhaustive, but it does go some way to uncovering the complexity of graffiti’s dynamic and contested geographies.
Following a recent growth of interest in questions of justice and the city, this paper considers how the work of contemporary critical urbanists compares with earlier accounts of urban justice and injustice. Our purpose in making this comparison is to consider how scholars concerned with justice and injustice in the city might better articulate the conceptual relationship between justice-thinking and (in)justice-documenting in their writings about the contemporary planned city. Using a selection of influential texts as evidence, our comparative commentary on past and present approaches focuses on three issues we think are crucial to this relationship. First, with the rise of analyses of the politics of difference, concepts of justice stressing procedure, process, and the hearing of multiple voices have come to the fore recently, especially in urban planning. Second, contemporary writers about geographies of justice have queried the value of using preformulated, philosophical justice norms to judge outcomes and processes in particular contexts, seeing justice, rather, as intuited in the enactment of social conflicts and practices in those actual situations. Third, questions about the spatiality of justice and injustice have been aired recently asking whether justice and injustice have primarily a social rather than a spatial ontology. The conclusion of our evaluative review is that similar issues are being named and investigated now as were four decades ago, in investigations of justice and injustice in cities, but that concerted debates about theory and epistemology have elaborated the conceptual focus of discussion. We call for grounded investigations of enactments of justice as well as of injustice.
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