Creating public spaces for invited art adds carrot to stick of banning uninvited graff

I've been arguing that part of the public policy solution to graffiti must be the creation of legitimate, invited public spaces for artwork in addition to banning uninvited graff.

El Paso has begun an experiment in that direction, with the local police department sponsoring a graffiti mural contest and selecting four teenage winners who were given carte blanche to illustrate four highway support poles. Two of the four winners will continue to work with the city on other projects, reports the El Paso Times ("Graffiti murals, artists take bows at Lincoln Park," Sept. 17).

Lately, as I've considered the possibility of creating spaces for "invited" graffiti, I've realized that support pylons holding up elevated highways and roads, like over- and underpasses, are prime real estate for potential invited graffiti projects. Electrical boxes are another obvious spot where graffiti could be invited, and also scaffolding at construction sites. (Indeed, in Brooklyn, NY a developer has begun using scaffolding with graffiti pre-installed to reduce uninvited graff.)

In fact, as you drive around town over the next few days, start to pay attention to the spots where you most commonly see graffiti and ask yourself, would I object if a quality, youth-drawn mural were allowed here instead? Anywhere you see quickly scrawled graff that you consider a blight could potentially be a spot hosting an invited youth mural. In most cases, as with the support poles along the highways, such illustrations would improve the landscape, not mar it. That's the idea behind a project in Brownsville where the local alternative education program takes kids out to paint murals over graffiti-ridden walls. And taggers are much less likely to deface property that's covered with recognizably intentional art.

There are two prongs, in my mind, to a successful graffiti strategy for municipalities: Eliminating uninvited graffiti as quickly as possible at minimum or no expense to the property owner, and creating (in cooperation with private interests) invited public spaces and opportunities for graff writers to display their work.

Graff writers are seldom caught by police, so jacking up criminal penalties against taggers has resulted in little decline in the amount of graffiti in most Texas cities. Rapid elimination of uninvited tags creates a stronger disincentive, while inviting talented artists to decorate public spaces gives them a reason to come out of the shadows and behave more responsibly, disrupting the culture of alienation that fuels petty vandalism. (Photos from the El Paso Times.)