STREET ARTISTS IN EUROPE - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

Street Artists in Europe
making. It means among others the preparing of scenarios on how to make the city attractive for
investments, tourists, or new migrants.
One way to become attractive is to become ‘original’. Different. To develop something unique,
that will serve as a label for the city in the future. And that is the way culture today was
introduced into urban development. Culture has a double meaning: creation on the one hand,
and the ensemble of characteristics of a special place or community, in other words, identity on
the other. Culture is able, in the same time to create and to represent (maintain) local identities.
And the term identity almost covers that little specialty that can make a place to be special and
attractive… Culture became a key factor for urban development, and this for a double reason:
related to its determining role in the new economy and related to its determining role in the
creation and maintenance of regional and urban identities. The presence of sectors relevant to
culture and creativity, i.e. the strength of the ‘creative economy’ became a key condition of
urban competitiveness 294 .
Through its complex roles culture is now a determining sector for urban planning and urban
strategy making. Cultural development as a transverse objective of urban development can be
considered as one main tool of urban policies. Street art is one of cultural sector’s branches that
represent the strongest relationship between art, urban space and urban development.
2.3. Street arts impacts…
Partly based on the definitions proposed by Philippe Chaudoir 295 , this chapter will describe the
main impacts of contemporary street arts on cities.
2.3.1 … on urban space:
The first and most evident is the effect of street arts on urban space. Street art event may play
long lasting effect on urban spaces even if the event itself has only short-term direct input on the
city. A street art event may change the whole urban area; temporarily transforms the use of the
place and the relationship between the space and its inhabitants… It may give a new history for
neighbourhoods, may transform their old customs, and may contribute to their identities. It
generates new symbols and a new meaning of space.
These strong spatial impacts on the city intervene more specifically through public spaces,
where street art events take place. As it has been formulated above, street art strongly
contributes to the changing of the conception of urban societies on the use and sense of public
spaces. It introduces a new, less functionalist and more community-based vision on these
intermediate spaces.
Estimating street arts’ impact on the urban development is quite a difficult exercise. As it will be
presented on the following pages study as well, one of the possible methods is to ask street
artists themselves about their conception on the role played by street art in the city. But one has
to be careful with this type of analysis. Although street artists are conscientious concerning their
role in cities, playing a direct effect on urban development is generally not between the direct
objectives of street art events. Street artists may therefore under-estimate the impact of their
events on the city as a result of the fact that in the majority of cases they do not analyse their
294 Landry, C., The Creative City, London: Comedia, 2000.
295 Chaudoir, P., op.cit.
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PE 375.307