Informality from above in the governance of graffiti and street art in Sydney

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the ways in which urban authorities and elites embrace informality when formal laws and regulations get in the way of making the city they want. In the case of Sydney, we show that the governance of graffiti and street art is not exclusively a matter of enacting and enforcing formal anti-graffiti laws and regulations. Rather, graffiti governance takes the form of a “rule by aesthetics” in which authorities and elites draw on both informal and formal repertoires of action to pursue their values and goals – the enhancement of neighborhood character and enlivenment of public space, through a selective embrace of some forms of street art alongside the eradication of others. Our account of “informality from above” adds to understanding of the enactment and contestation of power in graffiti governance, and draws attention to the role of aesthetic orders in the contested governance of urban landscapes more generally.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban informality
• elite informality
• graffiti
• street art
• urban governance
• urban aesthetics

Acknowledgements

Fieldwork to collect data used in this article was funded by the City of Sydney. We gratefully acknowledge the very helpful comments from our three anonymous referees, and the editorial team at Urban Geography. We also thank Wendy Murray and Matthew Peet, and the organizers and audience of the Informal Urbanism symposium at the University of Melbourne where Kurt road-tested an early version of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Some of these photographs, by one of the film's producers and photographer Henry Chalfant, would soon appear in the equally iconic book Subway Art (Cooper & Chalfant, 1984), to lasting global acclaim.

2 For a glossary of graffiti terms, see https://www.graffiti-empire.com/graffiti-glossary/

3 While NSW legislation currently gives local governments authority to remove graffiti from private property without permission, this power was only given in 2002. At that time, Sydney Lord Mayor Frank Sartor “admitted that in days leading up to the Olympics, the City of Sydney had resorted to removing graffiti from CBD walls illegally” – see Sydney Morning Herald, 13 April 2002, p. 35.

4 See Sydney Morning Herald, 7 April 2003, p. 14.

5 See https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/council-cleanup-claims-banksy-artwork-20100427-tpgf.html

6 We do not provide an image of this piece here, given the minor but real risk that if it is identified, it will have to be removed.

7 For a media account, see https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/mural-depicting-shane-fitzsimmons-defaced-in-apparent-protest-20210209-p570tm.html.

8 A video of this action can be viewed at: https://vimeo.com/12504200

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by City of Sydney (Grant RFQ122/12).