Citation
Finch, E. (2008), "Editorial", Facilities, Vol. 26 No. 1/2. https://doi.org/10.1108/f.2008.06926aaa.001
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2008, Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Editorial
It is interesting to see how graffiti is increasingly seen as a legitimate social and artistic phenomenon worthy of analysis, research and protection. For those in the business of managing real estate it is considered to be, at the very least, a nuisance and at worst as a criminal activity.
The fight against graffiti is often uppermost in the publicity material of many facilities management departments. Take, for example, this statement that appears prominently on the home page of the City of Santa Monica, Facilities Management Division:
The city has a very effective anti-graffiti team. There were over 10,250 graffiti removals last year – 94% of which were removed proactively. On a daily basis, city staff patrol areas of the city frequently tagged with graffiti. We use only environmentally safe products to remove graffiti from buildings, walls, sidewalks, utility poles, benches, and trash bins.
The eradication of graffiti is seen as part of a fight to create a “clean and healthy environment”.
Looking at the entry in Wikipedia we see that graffiti (the singular being the little known “graffito”) is the “name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, or more usually spray-painted on property that does not belong to the artist. Graffiti is often regarded by others as unsightly damage or unwanted vandalism”.
The term “artist” in preference to “vandal” is particularly contentious.
Looking at the research on graffiti you come across titles like: “Urban graffiti as territorial markers”, “Cleaner compositions for removing graffiti from surfaces”, “Urban graffiti: crime, control, and resistance”. You even have papers discussing the injurious effects on the graffiti artist such as a paper entitled “High exposures to organic solvents among graffiti removers”.
Whatever view we might have about graffiti it seems clear that facilities management provides the nexus for engaging the problem. Is it simply a symptom of a greater problem? Is it an indication that self-expression cannot find any legitimate pathway in our built environments? Or is it just a question of “pest control”? Whatever the opinion, involvement of the FM community in the debate seems overdue.
Edward Finch