(Un)Official Cityscapes: The Battle Over Urban Narratives (original) (raw)

2022, Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review

Every city has large public spaces that are accessible to everyone. City life is what happens in these spaces, this is where its spirit emerges and evolves. Being freely accessible to everyone, these spaces offer opportunities for spontaneous encounters between inhabitants. This communication, albeit mostly indirect, determines the very character of the city. Urban public spaces tend to develop their own rules of conduct, their own dynamics and atmosphere. Recognizing their central role in cities, courts identify urban public spaces as quintessential “public fora.” The visual design of urban public spaces (hereinafter “cityscape”) has an important impact on city life – it can channel interpersonal communication into certain directions while excluding others; it can powerfully communicate notions of what is important, what is acceptable, and what the right order of things in society is. While everyone may access urban public spaces, cityscapes are created by a very limited social group, consisting predominantly of property owners, politicians, and commercial enterprises. Real estate developers and municipal authorities decide which entities will occupy the key locations in our city, what information city billboards will communicate to us, and what kind of public art we will encounter on a daily basis. Non-surprisingly, this results in cityscapes highlighting the power of property, the importance of mainstream politics (such as elections), and, perhaps most conspicuously, the dominance of consumption in our lives. Indeed, as urban public spaces increasingly turn into sites of consumption, advertising occupies growing portions of cityscapes, demanding ever-larger portions of our attention. Art adorning urban spaces largely conforms to widespread aesthetic values and accepted social norms. These hegemonic cityscapes confront tireless resistance. Graffiti – uncommissioned painting and writing on city surfaces – disrupts the integrity of the official visual narratives, relentlessly claiming its own right to the city and offering alternative, unofficial cityscapes. Protecting official cityscapes, the legal system fights back. Local authorities remove the uncommissioned paintings and restore the official cityscapes. They define graffiti as a serious “epidemic” and declare “wars on graffiti.” Legislators toughen the “war on graffiti” by increasing existing penalties and introducing new ones, extending police search powers, and restricting various graffiti-related activities. The police expends substantial efforts to eliminate graffiti, spotting and arresting the writers. Finally, courts frequently issue remarkably high penalties for graffiti, expressing their dismay with what they see as a meaningless attack on property. These legal players are joined by property owners, who report graffiti cases to the police, sometimes remove the painting themselves, and sometimes take private measures to prevent graffiti. An additional significant force in this arena is the media that usually picture graffiti writers as “vandals” and “hooligans,” creating and fortifying social hostility toward them. This “war on graffiti” is commonly framed in terms of protecting property against paint. Yet, as this paper will reveal, the actual war is fought in battleground of narratives. Not all graffiti pieces are treated the same way. Messages that conform to the dominant narratives are usually met with sympathy and not punished. For instance, during the current Covid-19 outbreak, the media praises graffiti messages asking people to wash their hands or thanking the medical staff, while property owners and local authorities frequently chose not to remove such pieces. At the same time, non-conformist messages, such as “corona will kill us” are quickly removed, most severely condemned by the press, and reported to the police. The same is true for paintings: legal players protecting the official cityscape tend to accept pieces that conform to prevailing aesthetic standards, especially if made by famous artists. Thus, illegal works of a renowned graffiti artists are sometimes safeguarded by protective casting, and even restored by local authorities if “vandalized” by subsequent writers. In other words, the real war on graffiti a war fought over urban narratives. Property owners and authorities put great efforts into preserving the official cityscapes from disrupting messages, but readily accept illegal paintings that conform to their narratives. This policy reinforces the hegemony of the official urban narratives and suppresses alternative voices. In this paper, we will identify the narratives that enjoy a privileged position in the cityscapes and are constant winners in the battlefield over the narratives dominating our shared visual environment. We will argue that these highly one-sided cityscapes latently obstruct the efforts of making cities more inclusive, democratic, and multi-voiced. This paper proceeds as follows. Part I describes legal conflicts over the placement of various expressive elements into the cityscapes and their removal therefrom. Analyzing conflicts over expressions that seek their way into the cityscapes, as well as expressions, whose presence in the cityscapes encounters objections, we will identify the narratives that constantly prevail in such conflicts. These permanent winners represent the official narratives conveyed by the cityscapes. Part II focuses on unofficial cityscapes created by graffiti. It demonstrates that the legal treatment of graffiti is greatly dependent on the narratives it conveys, whereas illegal pieces that conform to the official narratives enjoy a highly privileged position. Part III will criticize the current state of affairs, in which official urban narratives occupy a hegemonic position, controlling our cityscapes and, consequently, largely dominating the dynamics of city life itself. It will conclude the discussion with a vision of an alternative legal order, one in which urban narratives emerge in a free and uncontrolled social discourse.