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Comment by mmooss | Hacker News Reader

Someone on HN once pointed out that there's a lot more graffiti around: It's printed, in a typeface, well lit, scaled much larger, and pollutes the landscape far more the spraypainted kind.

People call it 'advertising'. It's someone's or some company's tag and their design, and this graffiti is all over the place in the city (and some in the country too), and nobody likes it. I've never seen advertising that I would keep there if I had a choice, and it fills cities - just imagine a city without it.

Why should the wealthy, already with enormously loud voices, get to 'graffiti' the city and kids trying to express themselves and have any voice at all get criticized and arrested? I know the literal answer is property rights. In this case, that system excludes 99.x% from any voice or public expression; the real question is about justice and public good. (It's a philosophical question to explore the issues, not a policy proposal.)

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Graffiti is often framed at taking back the space. I think i’m rather lucky to live in a place where advertising seems somewhat more limited, with considerable space given to more local events, although i do have a giant billboard outside my flat.

There’s also a lot of space given over to graffiti, some more industrial spaces have completely embraced it, with whole lengths of walls and buildings allowing it. sharing with communal spaces such as as music venues and skate parks.

I think every underpass is also allowed, and fresh work appears every so often.

All the street furniture throughout the city, electrical boxes etc, are all uniquely decorated and it still cheers me when i see a new one.

Where are you that allows it in all those places? Do you mean that it's officially allowed or that laws against it are just not enforced?

Switzerland, many towns and cities seem to allow it in certain areas, the exact legality i’m not sure of. A lot of it is very good, and i think it’s organized to some aspect, with events where they redo whole areas and have competitions.

I really do like the street furniture one, which is pretty much everywhere in my city, it was organized by a local art group and involved many artists

Honestly think it’s a good thing

Exactly. If "it's ugly and I don't want to see it" is ostensibly a valid argument, there's a much better target to aim for first. And easier to enforce, too.

This reminds me of my as-yet-unfulfilled ambition to use 4chan's ad system for a public art project of some sort. The price/reach ratio seems pretty reasonable, and you pretty much know where your banner ads are going to end up (on the asshole of the internet).

I wonder, were any sort of uprising against public advertising to take hold, if they'd "volunteer" some existing ad space to go to artistic endeavors or something. Like affordable housing set-asides, but so you can look at something culturally-enriching instead of having to watch That Damn Progressive Ad (you know the one) for the nth time.

Not property rights, regulation. Advertising is limited to regulated areas. Graffiti is not. The comparison is well intentioned or meant to be thought provoking, and has some validity, but isn't the same thing.

The distinction breaks down in places where the "regulated areas" are "wherever a private property chooses to put an ad". Which is more or less the case in large parts of the US.

That's a difference, but in most places street art is allowed nowhere, effectively, especially compared to advertising.

People wouldn’t mind graffiti if the space was paid for like advertisers do. What people don’t like is people altering either public or private property unilaterally.

I meant to address that when I wrote about property rights: Only the wealthy can afford what you describe; that system effectively restricts such expression to them.

Also, if I pay you to advertise on your building, that's only two of us deciding: from the public's point of view, it's no better than unilateral. (Or you could put your own advertisement, such as your business name, on your building.)

Is it unilateral? Aren't there unwritten (or maybe even written) rules about who gets to tag where, how long it gets to stay up, etc.? You don't hear much about territory beefs these days, so I would think that some sort of agreement or code of conduct reigns in most areas, in order to prevent conflict.

Fun fact: Berlin drastically limited what the "advertising" space on public transit (notably stations) can be used for. IIUC, it can only be used now for cultural events and public announcements, no products of any kind.

Obligatory mention of Sap Paulo here ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidade_Limpa

Very interesting! What are the rules for businesses putting their own names on their stores?

> just imagine a city without it

Havana

Oh I fully agree with you. I'd get rid of it all if it was up to me.

Let's be honest: most graffiti we see every day is not art made in good faith. It's vandalism. And I'm not absolutist about it: I can appreciate a beautiful urban painting, just not when it's on the wall to someone's house or shop. Usually a few rude words scribbled in an emotional outburst, or - contrary to the article's point - somebody's literal signature. It's ugly, and its point is to annoy you, or at least annoy someone.

At the same time, billboards and advertisements are a cancerous growth that we don't have the courage to excise. And where we do, such as in protected historic areas, the landscape becomes beautifully transformed. I guess most people don't care, they just eat it up and accept the reality as it is - or rather, as it is forcefully pushed down their throats by corporations and aesthetically bankrupt business owners.

> on the wall to someone's house or shop

I rarely see it in those places (especially homes), and mostly see it in public places like underpasses, abandoned buildings, parking lots (which are often private, to be fair), etc. Your experience may vary, of course.

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