1

Figure 1. Target ad on Houston Street, New York

Chapter One: Introduction

On my last trip to New York City I

heard beautiful music and saw compelling

art, but I never stepped into an opera hall

or a museum. I just walked on the streets

and rode the subway. I saw a man playing

a cello underground. As the rushing crowd

slowed down, people gathered and listened

-- creating a dramatic moment,

spontaneous performance art. Looking out

the window of the subway train I saw

colorful calligraphy of graffiti decorating

concrete walls -- postmodern poetry lining

the tracks. In an alley behind a boarded up

building, I stumbled across a mural spray

painted in an impressionist style -- close

up a jumble of color, but from across the

alley -- faces staring with intensity. As I

looked, a homeless Hamlet ranted past me.

These moments were juxtaposed

with gigantic images of models -- giant

canvas ads draped over entire sides of

New York City buildings. The ads

themselves looked like artful photographs,

but their only message was the self-

conscious promise of satisfaction through

consumption. These images created a

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Figure 2. Mural in a New York City alley

strange awareness of the importance of public space as a medium of human

communication, and the complex negotiation that is taking place in urban environments

between the public and commercial uses of that space.

Public space has long been an important arena for democracy. It is a place where

citizen representation is possible, and where the normal and the marginal can be defined.

In this thesis, the action of being public, as it is related to communication, will be

explored. I will ask the questions about how we use and govern public space and what

effects this may have on communication. Specifically, I will look at the use and

governance of urban walls in Olympia,

Washington, as a medium for

communication in public space.

Two major trends of the 1960s and

1970s contributed to the perception of the

streets as unsafe places. In that period,

mentally ill patients were finding themselves

on the streets due to closure of mental

institutions and the lack of alternative social

services (Scull, 1984). At the same time the malls were becoming a new alternative to the

streets. In the time between the 1970s and 1990s a new mall opened up every seven

minutes in the United States (Rybczynski, 1993). The marketplace transformed from

largely local and independent stores and a relatively free public space to a highly

regulated commercial zone where public rights became more limited due to the private

nature of the malls (Rybczynski, 1993; Mattson, 1999). Mall owners were able to impose

their own controls, effectively excluding the increasing numbers of “undesirables” and

offering a “hassle free” consumer environment. Further affecting public space, the highly

controlled environments of malls forced downtowns to compete for consumers; this

fostered perceptions of the streets as unsafe and justified increased social control more

approximate to that of a shopping mall’s private spaces (Cohen, 1996).

3

The Broken Windows theory, attributing urban decline to signs of disorder, has

been used to implement “clean up” strategies on the streets, such as the ones in New

York City. This policy has spurred debates about ways to create vital public spaces.

Regulation governing both public space and behavior in public space has resulted in

implementation of laws directly affecting communication (Drucker and Gumpert, 1996).

Two major views have dominated the debates over the last century. Downtown Vitality Debates Broken Windows Theory

Based on the Broken Windows theory, graffiti is perceived as a sign of disorder,

signaling lack of control in a community (Wilson and Kelling, 1982). One reaction is the

desire for increased policing and surveillance of public spaces in order to reestablish

social control. Implementation of various civility laws, such as the ones in Seattle that

restrict sitting on sidewalks, ban graffiti on private property, prohibit attaching posters to

utility poles, penalize aggressive pan handling, and keep individuals from using public

parks have become synonymous with revitalization of neighborhoods. The goal of

increased control is to invigorate public life through restricting public spaces in order to

make them more attractive for public use. This argument follows the logic that “cleaner”

public areas will appear safer and therefore attract more citizens to use them (Wilson and

Kelling, 1982). The proponents of this approach argue that the marginal population

unfairly monopolizes public space and discourages its use by others. This rhetoric

employs the “tough love” attitude towards the marginalized, and defends the consumer’s

right to reach shops without being disturbed by undesirables. This approach attributes

urban decay to the signs of disorder. It becomes necessary for the state to rid public space

of undesirable behaviors and persons in order to demonstrate that social control exists,

and that, as Wilson and Kelling call them, "law abiding" citizens are safe in public. This

theory is popular in the development of city management policies because it offers

clearly defined problems and tangible solutions to them.

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Beyond Broken Windows Theory

Some scholars challenge the Broken Windows Theory, arguing that it places a

poorly theorized value on what is to be defined as a problem, when speaking about

behavior in public space (Garland, 1999). It produces increased need for social control by

creating solidarity around fear (Ericson, 1994). The argument against the Broken

Windows approach is that street cleansing makes one wonder how far law can be taken to

protect the consumer and what qualifies a person as “undesirable” to the welfare of

commerce. Democracy relies on public access to information, deliberation, and free

exchange of ideas, making communication indispensable to self-governance. Public

space can be considered one of the mechanisms of communication where social

interaction with accountability can occur (Drucker and Gumpert, 1996; Putnam, 1995).

This side takes the position that in the effort to revitalize public space, civility laws

exclude the poor and the marginal groups from the public sphere. A strategy focusing on

signs of disorder only gets rid of the symptoms and ignores the core of the bigger

problem, perpetuating social inequality. Improved means to self-governance instead of

increased control are at the core of this approach. Proponents of this second view are

accused of being too theoretical and lacking in concrete solutions.

Thesis Questions and Plan This thesis examines graffiti management in downtown Olympia as a way to

understand public space as a place of communication. This research poses questions that

ask: What is one community’s discourse about proper uses of public space? How does the

construction of "other" take place in the public discourse about graffiti? What is the

nature of the power struggle for uses of public space? What implications for the

governance of public space do Olympia experience and discourse have?

The economic, social, and architectural developments of public spaces have

altered society in such a way since the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were written

that the governance of communication spaces has had to be reconsidered. The trend

toward physical enclosure, increased personal mobility and privatization of the traditional

5

public square threatens freedoms in public places, putting the democratic practice of civic

discourse in jeopardy (Drucker and Gumpert, 1996).

The literature review, in the next chapter, will cover changing values and

meanings in human relationships associated with changing public spaces in the twentieth

century. It will examine the shifting notions of public sphere, the governance approaches

to public space, the concept of safety in managing public space, and the importance of

public space to communication.

The following research is an exploration of one town’s discussions about control

of public space and the implications for communication. Through a qualitative analysis of

in-depth interviews and a review of a local newspaper and the documents posted on a city

website, this research is designed to gain a deeper understanding of how access to public

space is negotiated in a community. Through the interviews, the attitudes and rhetoric of

citizens regarding graffiti were explored. Review of the newspaper and the documents

helped understand public deliberation on this topic. Although a marginal medium, graffiti

can have illuminating implications on how communication in public space is governed.

In this study, graffiti serves as an indicator to examine how access to the public sphere is

formed, how subjects and objects of governance are created and how proper uses of

public space are defined. Debates about graffiti can shed light on the understanding of the

public sphere as a place where power is asserted and contested. Ultimately, the intent of

this study is to contribute to the efforts concerned with creating a more vital and

democratic physical public space.

As stated above, the next chapter will discuss the various concepts of

communication in public space. Chapter Three will explain the methods used in the

research. Chapters Four, Five and Six will present research findings, with each chapter

focusing on a specific set of sources. The findings will be interpreted in depth in Chapter

Seven. The last section, the conclusion of this thesis, will present an opening for further

studies and research questions discovered in the course of the study.

6

Chapter Two: Literature Review

Graffiti usually means some sort of written expression in public space outside of

the law. Although graffiti is often deemed anti-social, it has persistently marked urban

walls despite considerable efforts to suppress it (Gadsby, 1995; Dennant, 1997). This

imperative to write in public places is oddly steadfast despite the danger posed by

punitive laws and, often, by violence from competing writers (Cooper and Chalfant,

1984). Non-commercial in nature, graffiti stands out as a mode of communication that

has somehow found a demand in modern culture, despite a seemingly high cost and low

returns.

The following chapter will place graffiti within a body of literature dealing with

the concept of the public sphere. Next, the relevance of public space to the public sphere

will be discussed. Finally the concept of safety and its relationship to the governance of

public space will be addressed. The final section of this chapter will focus on literature

defining graffiti as a form of communication. Defining the Public Sphere

Habermas’ classic description of the public sphere will serve as the launching

point for this discussion, followed by elaborations of other scholars who have attempted

to refine Habermas’ notion of the public sphere and expand its parameters. Habermas

(1989) defines the public sphere as an ideal neutral zone where information affecting the

public is accessible, and where discussion and deliberation is open to citizens on an equal

basis. Additionally, in this sphere, collective memory is formed and can be contested. In

this context the public sphere often requires (but is not limited to) a public space such as

town hall meeting places or salons and coffee houses where citizens are able to hold

rational arguments, form visions of society and recount history (Habermas, 1989).

Three major critiques of Habermas’ definition have been made. He relies too

heavily on a singular public sphere (Benhabib, 1992; Fraser, 1993); political deliberation

is too narrow of a scope for a deliberative process (Benhabib, 1992; Sparks, 1997); and

7

the value of dissent is overlooked (Sparks, 1997). These three criticisms call for an

augmentation of Habermas’ original description. First, democratization in a modern

society can be seen as increase and growth of autonomous public spheres. This plurality

of public spheres is central to a discursive model as opposed to the singular sphere, which

caters to bourgeois white men and excludes marginal groups including women

(Benhabib, 1992; Fraser, 1993). Second, the exclusive focus on “political” participation

is shifted to discursive will formation. The public sphere may contain practical discourse

where anyone who is affected by social norms can have a say, not only those who have

access to political power. This discursive activity can be realized not only in the political

realm, but in the social and cultural realms as well (Benhabib, 1992; Sparks, 1997). And

finally, the sphere is fragmented into subaltern publics that challenge the dominant public

sphere (Fraser, 1993). Participation may come from dissenters relegated to the “outside”

of the deliberative process, who may place a marginal issue onto the public agenda,

contesting the norm through unconventional means (Sparks, 1997).

Graffiti writing is placed within these theories as a set of subaltern publics, the

existence of which challenges social norms from the “outside” of the dominant public

sphere. It is an instance of active participation in discursive formation through social and

cultural realms in addition to political ones.

Psychologist and social philosopher Eric Fromm refers to a successful and

respected artist as one who at some point has attained financial success, and therefore

found acceptance in the dominant public sphere. In his book Escape From Freedom,

(1941: pg208) he writes: “The artist is in the same position as a revolutionary in history,

where the successful one is respected and the failed one considered a crank or a

criminal.” That which has the potential to become a commodity is generally given

validity in the public sphere over that which is free and impermanent. Jean Michelle

Basquiat, as a teenage tagger, avoided police in New York City, scribbling on building

walls. Later, what Mcguigan (1985) called in The New York Times his “poetic messages

and …odd symbols” sold in galleries for thousands of dollars and at the same time were

scrubbed off city walls as vandalism. The irony exists not only in this definition of valid

8

expression as something that is placed on a proper surface, but also in the proper place. A

work placed in a gallery attains high social status compared to work that is free in public

space. A number of leading investment experts advised their customers that prestigious

art qualifies as a good investment; for instance, Citibank accepted Basquiat’s work as

collateral (Mcguigan, 1985). It is the relative exclusivity of the work as well as its

permanence, collectibility and potential for investment that adds to its value.

Graffiti is not only that which is written or painted, but the act itself that forms the

discourse. It is the act of changing one’s environment. As art is placed in a gallery and

validated through its price, graffiti contradicts this condition by creating a democratic

gallery in the place where art is least expected. Not only is it free and exists

predominantly where most art critics and buyers would not go, but it also defies the idea

that art must be preserved and permanent. Graffiti, in its true sense,• is never permanent;

it goes up and disappears under copious layers of paint. Graffiti artist Backover expresses

this sentiment in Walsh's Graffito,

"Graffiti is a kick in the face to the gallery/museum system, where the artist is pimped like a whore for the capitalist system, made into another commodity for people to buy...graffiti art is free for all to come and view, no-one can own it, it belongs to all of us" (Backover in Walsh, 1996). Graffiti can, also, be a method to stake a claim in the public space. It is a public

sphere for those who feel that their voice and existence is ignored or rejected in the

traditional sphere dominated by the elite. Graffiti writer Eskae talks about the economic

inequality that makes a difference in access to public space,

"People with money can put up signs…if you don't have the money you're marginalized…you're not allowed to express yourself or to put up words that you think other people should see. Camel, they are up all over the country and look at the message Camel is sending and companies like them…they're just trying to keep the masses paralyzed so they can go about their business with little resistance" (Eskae in Walsh, 1996).

• Although recently it has become a fad to buy "graffiti,” I define graffiti as not simply paint on a surface (in which case it becomes a painting), but the act and the location, which in itself is a complete text and is an antithesis to commodification.

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Subaltern publics in the realm of graffiti writing can be highly organized where

participants follow rules and conventions much as in any legitimate organization. For

example, Hip Hop graffiti writers’ subculture is broken down into classes defined by skill

levels, mentor/protégé relationships, crews and wider networks; consists of values

ranging from fame, power, expression and rebellion and provides strong social bonds

(Brewer and Miller, 1990).

Physical public spaces where diverse social groups can contribute to discourse are

integral to the public sphere (Gulick, 1998). Because of economic limitations, physical

public space has been an important arena for the creation of meaning for those who may

lack access to mass-mediated deliberation. Although this medium may not reach as wide

an audience as national newspapers or television, it is a space that provides an

opportunity for an interaction of citizens regardless of their social status in a society

(Jacobs, 1961).

However, the vitality of physical public space is often ignored in theories on the

public sphere. With advanced technological communications and elevated consciousness

about security and privacy, anxiety towards the external environment increases (Gumpert

and Drucker, 1998). As this preoccupation with privacy and security rises, deliberation

and participation in the public sphere become dulled (Gumpert and Drucker, 1998). It is

important to re-evaluate the use of public space for communication in a society where the

private and public arenas become increasingly intertwined and mediated communication

increasingly permeates human interaction (Mattson, 1999; Gumpert and Drucker, 1998).

Studies have shown that individuals who have weak social interactions fear and

mistrust others, and exhibit heightened anxiety over signs of disorder such as graffiti

(Ross and Jang, 2000, Gumpert and Druker, 1998). For these people surveillance and

stronger control of the streets are perceived as a necessary solution to fear. It is therefore

important to nurture strong public spaces that foster social participation in the public

sphere through building mutual respect, trust and accountability among citizens (Putnam,

1995).

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Public Space: Laws and Changes Legally, public space has long been recognized as an important venue for

democratic deliberation. Since the industrial revolution led to urbanization, social values

towards public space have been shifting, and the courts have been trying to re-interpret

constitutional protection of the two major principles of democracy - protection of free

speech and the protection of private property - to fit the needs of the changing society

(Friedelbaum, 1999). As the rift between private property interests and public welfare

grows in modern culture, so does the importance of the laws in protecting the citizen

against abuses of power, be it the power of the government or the power of big business

(Rishikoff, 1996).

In 1939 the Supreme Court decided that while the privilege of citizens to use

public spaces such as streets and parks for communication can be regulated, it could not

be abridged or denied (Hague v CIO, 1939). In this landmark case, the Supreme Court

began to recognize the “right to public speech” as an individual right. This led to the

development of the “public forum” doctrine and the modern First Amendment right of

free speech. Beginning with the 1939 Hague v. CIO Supreme Court ruling, Americans

have been guaranteed the public forum of the streets and parks to express unpopular

views, to rail against the government, to complain about authority, and so forth.

Protection of free speech in public space became an issue of individual rights (Pfohl,

1993). Debates about proper management of public space tend to fall back on arguments

between protection of expression and the appropriate regulation of expression. In fact, in

the course of writing this thesis, a Washington court of appeals ruled (on 8/8/2002) that

Seattle's poster ban, which banned postings on utility poles, was a violation of the First

Amendment. The court recognized utility poles as “a traditional public forum,” declaring

the prohibition of postings a violation of a right to “public speech.”

Dating back to the Greek Agora, a public place of assembly usually meant the

marketplace where the proximity of shops for the efficiency of commerce provided an

opportunity for social exchange in the form of a public sphere. Since the beginning of

industrialization, architects, urban developers and scholars in social sciences have studied

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the effects of modernization on human activity in public space. Some scholars argue that

eventually, the public fled from downtowns to malls and suburbs in response to a failing

city center (Rybczynski, 1995). George Gehl, a Danish architect, proposes that the cause

and effect has been reverse. He writes that suburban sprawl caused lifeless and empty

cities. Citing Danish studies on the relationship of population density and outdoor

activity, Gehl adds that social interaction is reduced in suburban areas due to the sprawl

and car-centric design. This same trend of reduced human activity in the city creates a

vicious circle; children would rather stay in and watch TV because the outside is dull or

dangerous. Old people do not go outside because the streets are empty and there is

nothing to see. As a result, the lack of activity in public space brings on disintegration of

the city causing it to be perceived as dull and threatening, in turn further driving people

away from the city and resulting in downtown decay (Gehl, 1996).

As town centers have taken on the identity of decay and danger, pseudo-public

places of malls have become increasingly attractive (Rybczynski, 1995). Malls provide

ample walking space and no threat of cars; there is an opportunity to be in public, see and

be seen (Altman and Zube, 1989). The private mall, to borrow the term from Jean

Baudrillard, is a simulacrum of a public space; it is a creation of an ideal marketplace that

is comfortable, climate controlled, easy to navigate, social and protected. It is, however,

also homogenous, conventional, predominantly representative of commercial interests

and not subject to constitutional protection of First Amendment rights. Although citizens

have attempted to use malls as traditional public spaces for political demonstrations, a

series of legal rulings sparked a debate about the meaning of public space in private

institutions, and the necessity of public space for the exercise of the First Amendment.

Even though public funds have been allocated to mall developers, malls remain largely

private institutions; as such they are not bound by the First Amendment and can exercise

commercial censorship as well as impose other restrictions on freedom such as curfews

and loitering laws (Mattson, 1999).

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Figure 3. Why are you afraid?

Safety: Construction of Fear Alienation from the streets, coupled with repetitive depictions of violence in the media,

cultivates fear of public places. The multitude of television crime shows can produce an

irrational fear of crime, leading to an increasingly

punitive criminal justice system and weakened

constitutional protection (Barrile 1984; Heath 1984;

Surette 1992). Gerbner’s research of “the mean world

syndrome,” for example, shows that the more

violence one sees on television, the more one feels

threatened by violence. Because television depicts the world as violent, viewers become

fearful and anxious over time. They become willing to depend on authorities, strong

measures, gated communities, and other controlled environments such as malls (Gerbner,

1998).

Those who have higher exposure to television tend to perceive the outside world

as a mean and dangerous place (Gerbner, 1998). Ultimately, the arguments about the

governance of public space center around the perception of safety. If the downtown is

perceived unsafe, its economic viability is vulnerable. The vitality of urban environments

is usually judged by the health of its marketplace; therefore, healthy commerce has been

the goal of policy making. Considering commercial interests, when safety is the primary

concern of the consumer, it creates pressure to promise a safe environment.

Such environments can be found in the malls where private security and other

policing devices such as restrictive architecture, curfew and cameras are used to mitigate

concerns (Mattson, 1999; Stossel, 1997; Kowinski, 1985). The consumer, preferring the

safety promised in the highly controlled atmosphere of the mall, is lured away from the

unpredictability of the street. Having to compete with these controlled environments,

civility laws have been created to increase control of public space in a spirit more

approximate to that of the mall.

The elevation of privacy and security values parallel the increasing fear of public

space with the development of technology. As fear of crime rises, a disconnection from

13

Figure 4. Other

locale increases, “homes continue to shift inward away from less controllable public life”

and people search for communities through communication networks in the privacy of

the home (Gumpert and Drucker, 1998). As boundaries of private and public space

become blurred with virtual spaces offering a “safe” alternative, concerns about the social

spheres in physical environments arise. In many urban areas in the United States, homes

and technologies are marketed to the values of fear, promising to protect their inhabitants

from a dangerous world (Ericson, 1994: Gumpert and Drucker, 1998).

As anxiety is fueled by alienation, the need for security increases. The values of

safety replace the need for equality (Lau, 1992). Ericson (1994) defines this as a negative

logic where threats and dangers are dealt with by the construction of “suitable enemies,”

and solidarity is based on fear. Those who have felt disconnected from their communities

can now find a way to identify with others who fear, having found an easily defined

source of risk in signs of disorder such as graffiti.

At the same time, information related to risk has become a commodity. Police,

along with other social institutions such as insurance companies, financial institutions,

and health and welfare agencies, are all a part of a large, loosely connected network that

communicate with each other. Police are often relied upon to provide information,

manage and detect risk in a way that goes beyond traditional policing roles (Ericson and

Haggerdy, 1997). According to Ericson, this approach transforms the traditional notion of

community (shared territory, values, identities, and traditions) to one dominated by

shared fears of risks defined in terms of categories on police report forms.

Anonymous, illegal graffiti expresses and increases the feeling of isolation of

citizens from one another (figure 4). Those who commit the act, defining themselves as

the "other" or placing themselves outside of the

law and the community, may be acting out of

alienation (Lucca and Pacheco, 1986; Brewer

and Miller, 1990). Laws targeting these

individuals will further push them into the

outlaw culture (Ferrell, 1996). Those who

14

encounter graffiti in their communities have learned to identify it as a sign of risk. Their

response, a newly found solidarity against this “suitable enemy,” is manifested in the

demand for more social control (Ross and Jang, 2000). Thus, a cycle of control and

resistance is set in motion.

“Broken Windows” A piece of property is abandoned, weeds grow up, a window is smashed. Adults stop scolding rowdy children; the children, emboldened, become more rowdy. Families move out, unattached adults move in. Teenagers gather in front of the corner store. The merchant asks them to move; they refuse. Fights occur. Litter accumulates (Wilson and Kelling, 1982).

In 1982 George L.

Kelling advanced the

Broken Windows theory. It

holds that petty crimes such

as illegal graffiti, when

ignored, invite more

disorder. As mentioned

earlier, two approaches to

the management of public

space resulted from the

debates surrounding this

theory. One is that of increased social control towards signs of disorder and another of

improved social responsibility (Harcourt, 2001). The media praised Broken Windows-

inspired “Zero Tolerance” policies initiated in New York, crediting this strategy for

considerably reducing the presence of graffiti.

The reduced crime rates can be traced in large part to a shift in focus adopted by the NYPD in 1994. Applying many of the principles outlined in the Broken Windows theory developed by James Q. Wilson and George Kelling over a decade earlier, the NYPD implemented a zero-tolerance policy toward criminal activity - including seemingly petty offenses that rarely warranted police intervention before. As the police began to make arrests for such quality-of-life

Figure 5. Punisher

15

Figure 6. "Official graffiti"

offenses as public drunkenness, graffiti-painting, aggressive panhandling, and disorderly conduct, outward signs of social control began to return to the city's public areas (McCarthy, 1998).

At the same time, this approach was questioned in the media:

The anti-graffiti campaign, which scrapped or scrubbed 6,245 cars and kept 1,000 city workers busy at an annual cost of $52 million, struck critics as a misplaced priority. Why battle the symbols of danger, they demanded, rather than crime itself? How much sadder the metropolis was without its brilliant graffiti jungle, those "bouquets of color from the Caribbean," as artist Claes Oldenburg once described the art of the underground (U.S. News & World Report, 1989).

As the trend has been picked up by other cities, the goal

to target “petty offenses” is an effort to present the image

of social control in revitalization of public life. Such an

approach should make the public feel like public space is

under control, and safer. As a result, a myriad of

institutions rely on police for the management of risk,

constructing fear as a commodity (Ericson, 1994). For

public institutions, police have become expert advisors on

governance. What Hermer and Hunt (1996) call “official

graffiti” takes the form of prohibitory signs that define objects and subjects of regulation

(figure 6). Risk and the necessary insurance from risk are identified. This construction of

power is in turn resisted through defacement (illegal graffiti) that results in complex order

and disorder of surfaces and spaces in the struggle of power (Hermer and Hunt, 1996).

In the modern “risk society” insecurity is perpetuated (Ericson, 1994). Garland’s

critique of this policy is that it is based on a poorly theorized framework. This approach

does not just target behaviors; it punishes the underprivileged and drives them away from

public view. Garland calls this logic absolutist and not strategic, making an argument that

the major force of this logic is based on collective emotion rather than expert knowledge

(Garland, 1999). Fear and anxiety result from factors more complex than graffiti and

panhandlers (Ross and Jang, 2000). The laws behind fear-driven regulation of public

16

space result in a constraining effect on civil liberties such as expression (Drucker and

Gumpert, 1996).

Hard social questions, which relate to order maintenance, surface. In a fear driven

discourse, who becomes the subject of regulation? What effect do these policies have on

who we think is likely to commit crime? How do these norms of “city vitality” affect our

comprehension of human nature? Do “clean up” strategies focus too much on details to

fix large social problems (Harcourt, 2001; Taylor, 2001)?

Scholars, in criminology and law, argue that the Broken Windows theory

erroneously focuses on an ecological dynamic rather than a psychological and social one.

This theory looks at the physical ecology of the urban environment, such as a broken

window or graffiti. Taylor argues in Breaking Away from Broken Windows that this

theory is “partially missing the boat." Even if a single condition such as graffiti was to be

totally eliminated from a neighborhood, the effects would be modest in proportion to the

total fear problem (Taylor, 2001). He writes that community-policing efforts with a focus

solely on ecological conditions leave the bulk of causes of fear untouched and therefore

do not prove to be effective. Taylor poses yet unanswered questions: Does fear cause

problems or problems cause fear? Or do they feed each other? Or does a third process

drive them both? Evidence exists that places defined by community members as hot spots

of fear are likely to be different than those defined by police as hot spots of concern

(Matz, 1991; Taylor, 2001). Taylor calls for a broader approach to management of public

space than the Broken Windows thesis:

…Officials responsible for urban redevelopment ought not hope that grime fighting initiatives by themselves will restore the fundamental fabric of neighborhoods which has been damaged by decades of inadequate city services, declining employment opportunities for its adults, and declining educational quality for its youth. That fundamental fabric continues to cause shifts, unfolding over time, in how residents view their locale and in what it is like to live there (Taylor, 23). Harcourt claims the Broken Windows theory to be simplistic and empirically

unverified by research to support a significant relationship between neighborhood

disorder and serious crime such as homicide, burglary, rape, etc. While not denying some

17

use for civility strategies inspired by Broken Windows, Harcourt criticizes the over-

dependence on the theory. Harcourt argues that the theory perpetuates the avoidance of

the complex issues such as race and class that play into urban decay. Questions of

environmental pollution, public transportation systems, zoning laws, access to business

loans and mortgages etc., become replaced with a few problems of broken glass and

scribbled walls (Harcourt, 2001). At the same time, the burden to remedy social ills falls

on the shoulders of police, rather than on other social institutions. It might be that

weakened collective efficacy and structural disadvantages are the real culprits of disorder.

Civility laws misplace the blame of urban decay and place the burden of vitalization on

police, unnecessarily restricting civil liberties.

Graffiti Studies In this section the term graffiti will be defined. The definition will first be placed

within the broad scholarly research and then narrowed to a working definition for this

thesis. After briefly mapping historical and academic literature about graffiti, Regina

Blume's graffiti motives model will be used to define its communication aspects. The last

part of this section will focus on defining the types of graffiti specific to Olympia.

What is graffiti?

A plethora of definitions turn up for the term graffiti. Etymologically, stemming

from the Italian word for scratching, the word is related to a mural technique called

graffito. While such scratching dates back as far as cave paintings, the modern definition

of graffiti is that of any unsanctioned or unwanted writing in public spaces. Further,

scholarly definitions of modern graffiti range from classifying graffiti as a prank

(Varnedoe and Gopnik, 1990) to an uninhibited form of communication, otherwise not

possible because of social norms (Abel and Buckley, 1977; Rodriguez and Clair, 1999;

Klingman and Shalev, 2000) to an act of creative resistance (Ferrell, 1993, Klein, 2000),

as well as a sign of decay and disorder (Rudin, 1996; Grant, 1996; Black 1997).

Graffiti studies are generally broken down into types of spaces (Abel & Buckley,

1977; Melhorn & Roming, 1985). Although many variations of unsanctioned writing

exist, graffiti has become an all-encompassing term. Some scholars have attempted to

18

create new terminology for graffiti to express its particularities. For example, latrinalia is

a term invented by Dundes (1996) in reference to bathroom graffiti; Hagen coined

catastroffiti in a research describing graffiti that appeared after a flooding catastrophe

(Hagen, 1997). The term official graffiti refers to everyday regulatory signs which

Hermer and Hunt (1996) define as an example of a government at a distance. They

juxtapose sanctioned and unsanctioned public writing through which hegemony is

exercised through signs and resistance articulated by their defacement (Hermer and Hunt,

1996).

Despite academic creativity in inventing graffiti terminology, many modern

graffiti writers refer to their work as writing rather than graffiti. Dennant suggests that in

the US graffiti is a term that was coined to talk about the graffiti culture that began

sometime in the late 1960s (Dennant, 1997). For the purpose of this discussion the term

graffiti will be limited to those beginnings in the 1960s when graffiti in the US was

recognized as a cultural phenomenon. At that point, in the sixties, it served, mostly, as a

territorial function for gangs to communicate between gang members and rivals. In 1971

mass media played a role in raising awareness of graffiti when The New York Times

printed a story about a seventeen-year-old Manhattan messenger who began writing his

nickname and street number all along his route. He wrote Taki 183 inside and outside the

trains on the subway and with the help of The New York Times article became a local

celebrity. In New York City, known for its anonymity, such access to fame and visibility

became infectious among teenagers and exploded all over the neighborhoods (Cooper

and Chalfant, 1984; The New York Times, 1971).

Much of the modern graffiti tradition comes from writing on trains. When Taki

183 began writing in the subway trains, trains in New York City were an attractive

canvas for graffiti. Train yards provided a semi-safe place to paint. They also presented a

communication network between graffiti writers. Writers could see the trains go through

their neighborhoods; their work displayed like a big personal ad. The writing became

more public, covered more public space, became more visible and gained more

recognition. Many writers became intimately familiar with train schedules and routes

19

allowing for a more deliberate and successful canvas for writing and method of

distribution (Cooper and Chalfant, 1984). Trains have long served as a medium for the

“outsider” subcultures. Writing on trains was pioneered by “hobo graffiti,” and modern

graffiti writers continue to use trains as a medium, keeping track of each other’s work all

over the continent (Ferrell, 1999).

Urban kids saw public space as a medium for mass communication. They began

to develop their own logos that would identify them in a public way. Each tag became a

personal insignia designed to create a public identity for the street. The need for quick

recognition drove a development of style. It was necessary to make the name stand out

from the rest and be recognized at a glance (Cooper and Chalfant, 1984). Kids were able

to reach folk hero status by having their street name (tag) appear most often and stay up

the longest (Cooper and Chalfant, 1984). The city became the medium-- and the message

-- a prank, a playful challenge to authority, a reclamation of visibility in an environment

where visibility is reserved for those who can afford to pay for it.

Blume’s communication model

Regina Blume (1985) created an effective model for graffiti and communication

studies, categorizing the various motives of graffiti writing. Her model consists of two

main communication groups-- one of mass and reflexive communication and the second

of categorical and individual communication. This model, described below, is a useful

tool in organizing the types of graffiti studied in this research.

Blume suggests that there are five motivations for graffiti as a mass and reflexive

communication:

a) Proof of existence. Where a tag or a name is written to show that the author exists. b) Need for self-expression. Feeling unimportant or impotent, in a large industrial

society, the writer feels that this is the most accessible method of public expression. Ironically, the anonymity of the act serves as an advantage (Rodriguez & Clair, 1999).

c) Documentation of group membership. The writer publicly identifies with a group that they belong to or see as prestigious, such as a crew of writers. Blume compares this to writing on T-shirts, buttons or stickers that fill a similar function.

d) Pleasure in aesthetic, creative and physical acts. Blume points to the richness of poetic text structures in graffiti (allusion, parody, rhyme, alliteration, games with letters etc.). This is also manifested in the challenge to display aesthetic style, and

20

or creativity and agility in writing on hard to reach places such as freeway overpasses, fire escapes, bridges etc.

e) Boredom. Blume limits this category to a motive where the author is not fully engaged in a main form of communication, such a doodling while having a telephone conversation (Cherubim & Rehbock, 1981). This category is not much use for classification of public graffiti, at least while there is no known link between cell phone use and graffiti writing. However, this may be applied in a broader sense – youth, bored with shopping and watching television as a main form of public communication may be turning to graffiti for lack of alternatives.

She also outlines three types of graffiti as categorical and individual communication:

f) Expression of criticism, protest, rejection or agreement. Blume writes that this is true for all graffiti, which involves expression of politics in a broad sense.

g) Marking of territory. This is a reference to the communication systems of gangs. In US cities gangs use graffiti to define drug-dealing territory, challenge other gangs and communicate threats (Kostka, 1977).

h) Search for contacts. This motive is often associated with marginal groups that use graffiti to overcome isolation.

Blume’s model is useful in illustrating the importance of graffiti to the study of

communication. The following descriptions of Olympia graffiti will apply Blume’s

categories to link graffiti with the various types of communication.

Olympia graffiti

Having outlined the general definition of graffiti, it is now possible to further

hone the definition of the graffiti in question. This thesis focuses on debates about graffiti

regulation, which occurred between 1997 and 2002 in downtown Olympia. This is public

graffiti visible to the public as much as any official city signs or commercial billboards.

In this respect it plays a certain mass communication role. The four different types of

graffiti relevant to Olympia are: (1) tags, (2) gang, (3) political and (4) pieces.

Tags are the personal logos described above. They are highly stylized and usually

undecipherable to the general public. They are used to communicate within the internal

network of graffiti writers. Outsiders tend to see tags as the most unsightly manifestations

of graffiti. They are most often associated with gang graffiti and probably due to their

cryptic nature are seen as the most threatening type. The communicative nature of tags

would fit into Blume’s description of (a) proof of existence and (d) pleasure in aesthetic,

21

creative and physical acts. Graffiti writers speak of good tags and ugly tags. The tags that

gain most respect are the ones that have design style, appear frequently and stay up the

longest. In the vein of an art critic, my informant XY, a well-known and highly respected

graffiti writer, describes the “good” tags as tight and consistent in style and dismisses the

ugly tags as ones done without any particular attention to aesthetics or purpose. Likewise,

One, a tagger, told me “writers are most critical of ugly stuff." XY went on to describe

two famous taggers whose fame is earned by having their tags appear in almost any city

in the US.

Aside from being consistent in style, the writer has to be creative and persistent

about the writing, in order to achieve the desired fame. The more creative and daring the

writer, the longer it will take the authorities to remove the tag from those hard-to-reach

places. By staying up for long periods of time, the graffiti becomes known and the writer

recognized by other writers for clever tag placement. Persistence is an alternative strategy

to creative placement. In this case the writer must tag habitually and voluminously if it is

to be done in easy-to-reach places where tags can be quickly cleaned up or written over

(A similar strategy is followed in commercial communication: junk mail succeeds

because of its volume).

Graffiti artist XY describes one tagger who “would take forever to get anywhere”

because he had to stop off in every business downtown and use the restroom in order to

tag there. Authorities usually try to become familiar with various tags and put a face to

the tag in order to apprehend the writer. In some cities, for example, police take

photographs of tags and prosecute writers based on each record of the tag associated with

the perpetrator. Critical of a double standard targeting graffiti, Taki 183 asks in his

famous NYT interview, “Why do they go after the little guy? Why not the campaign

organizations that put stickers all over the subway at election time?”

Gang graffiti is probably the most threatening form. Referring to Blume’s

categories, gangs use graffiti to (c) document group membership and (g) to mark

territory. Territory marking is often associated with drug dealing where it is necessary to

draw a visible turf boundary ruled by each gang. Dick Machlan, who worked as a gang

22

specialist for a California school district, describes gang graffiti as a communication

system set up with marking the street names of those associated with the gangs. Graffiti

often poses a challenge to other gangs through violation of others’ spaces; it is not

uncommon for gang graffiti to escalate to violence as retaliation for violation of space.

Machlan talks about his days in California:

I used to 'read the walls’; often you could tell if there was an escalation. This has been now a long time tested communication effort used by generations of gang members (Machlan, interview 2002).

There has been a spread of gang graffiti to the Northwest largely centered on the drug

business. Eight years ago, on his way to Olympia, Machlan spotted a mark on the

Tacoma overpass, which read BK187. BK stood for Blood Killers (Cryps gang) and 187 -

the California penal code for homicide. “It’s a transplant from California,” he explains.

According to Machlan, in Olympia there was a little of that in 1996, but for a number of

years gang graffiti has been entirely absent.

The most common graffiti in Olympia is political graffiti, according to Dick

Machlan, now the Olympia police spokesman. He explains this by the liberal nature of

Olympia:

What we see more is political activism – Olympia being a political animal that it is. [We see a] full range of causes from animal rights activists, gay and lesbian rights activists, a host of activism groups. These are…slogans, anarchist graffiti, symbols, etc…In a community where there is a lot of value placed on freedom of expression you are going to find a lot of that (Machlan, interview 2002). Such political graffiti appears in Blume’s model of motives as (b) need for self-

expression and (f) expression of criticism, protest, rejection or agreement. Political

messages usually appear in open spaces where they have a lot of exposure. They are not

written for competition with other writers or self-promotion, but more to promote a

cause, an opinion or to provide information. These messages tend to appear places where

the public will see them, such as the one facing a busy road, in front of the Capitol

building (figure 7). These are not often differentiated from tagging by non-writers,

because even though the messages are more legible, they tend to be hastily written and

for the most part not aesthetically pleasing.

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Finally, the graffiti that is most commonly recognized for artistic integrity is

known as pieces (short for masterpieces). These are most

elaborate and often highly prestigious types of writing

inside the graffiti culture (Cooper and Chalfant, 1984) as

well as outside. The most fitting motivations, from

Blume’s model, for this category are (c) documentation of

group membership and (d) pleasure in aesthetic, creative

and physical acts. The group membership is often

documented in that the main piece includes smaller tags

identifying the members of the crew that the writer

belongs to. Belonging to a crew brings levels of prestige

depending of the fame and skill of its members (Cooper

and Chalfant, 1984; Brewer and Miller, 1990; Brewer,

1992).

Pieces can also include other identifying tags such

as the name or an area code of the writer’s city. “Tacoma

253” (253 is a Tacoma area code) in Figure 8, is

reminiscent of the early Taki 183 tag that gives the

number of Taki’s street in New York City. Pieces are

large, elaborately designed graphics, usually words and/or cartoon characters. These

pieces require skill and time to complete. They are less likely to appear in highly visible

illegal areas, due to the danger of being arrested that is

posed to the writer. Instead, pieces usually appear on

legal walls or in low traffic areas such as trains, the train

tunnel or empty buildings in less visible areas. In

Olympia pieces most often appear on legal walls, trains or as commissioned murals.

However, although the style might be undistinguishable, XY insists that murals are just

murals; once a piece is commissioned it is no longer graffiti. Several of XY’s

commissioned graffiti-style murals adorn Olympia city walls, but he sees graffiti as

Figure 7. Graffiti left on July 4, 2002 in front of the Capitol Building in Olympia

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Figure 8. Tacoma 253

something completely different. When asked why he writes illegally on public property

when he can paint legally he replies, “Same reason rich white people like to climb Mt.

Everest. It’s the same thing—‘because it’s there.’" He talks about the rush and the

challenge of being outside the law much like a mountain climber would talk about the

reason for risking a life to defy the laws of nature.

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Chapter Three: Method The Case

This is a case study of themes in the discussions about graffiti management in

Olympia, Washington. Currently the city is undergoing growth and development; as a

result, many are concerned about downtown policies. Management of the downtown

image is perceived to have implications for the vitality and development of the city.

Administration of public space is therefore a highly debated and important topic for the

city. A conflict between the protection of private property and free speech has been a

central issue in the community. In the past several years, graffiti was identified as a

“problem” contributing to downtown decay. Solutions have been sought in regulating

graffiti.

Prior to 1998, four

local business owners

allowed their walls to be

open for graffiti writing. In

1998, Harry Levine was

hired to manage the non-

profit Olympia Film

Society (OFS) at the

Capitol Theater, the site of

one of the free walls. At

about the same time,

Connie Lorenz became the

coordinator of a local

business group, the

Olympia Downtown Association (ODA). The first major graffiti management

controversy took place at this time. Lorenz and Levine were each backed by a locally

respected grass-roots organization and armed with good intentions to improve their

Figure 9. Free graffiti wall on the Capitol Theater building

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downtown community. The ODA attributed the spread of illegal graffiti to the legal

walls’ existence. The Downtown Association believed that graffiti communicated a

message to consumers that downtown is an unsafe place. Connie Lorenz, leading the

ODA with an interest in protecting the economic vitality of downtown, initiated a move

to close all of the legal graffiti walls.

We said, “There seems to be graffiti in certain areas more than others" … We started to do research, asked the owners “is this what you want? It’s getting all over." They said “no”…. We approached them as something we are taking on as a conversation. We said, "This is your choice, you tell us what you want to do." Property owners chose not to have graffiti on their walls (Lorenz, interviewed 5/13/02).

Identifying graffiti as a problem, and approaching the building proprietors, the ODA

successfully shut down the four free walls, despite protests from some of the business

tenants. One of those tenants, Harry Levine representing the OFS, advocated for free

walls as a valuable use of public space. Levine organized a public forum and fought to

leave the wall of the OFS building open for graffiti.

Unbeknownst to OFS, the ODA started an anti-graffiti push; somebody called and said ODA was on the verge of recommending a graffiti-free zone to City Council. They talked about having security cameras; prosecuting fully, police state approach to strengthen the ordinances, clear all free sites. They were lining up building owners, and we became the magnet for organizing the resistance (Levine, interviewed 5/13/02).

As a result of this resistance, the wall of the Capitol Theater, home to the Olympia Film

Society, was reopened for painting. This was the beginning of a debate to follow,

regarding the role of communication in public space with graffiti at center stage.

The Setting Downtown Olympia

The city of Olympia is situated in Washington State, 60 miles south of Seattle.

Olympia’s downtown is roughly 530 acres. The State Capitol Campus, Capital Lake,

Budd Inlet, and Eastside Street border its retail core, offices, residences, the waterfront,

and the transit center. All the sites of this study are located within the core of downtown

Olympia. Each site for the study was selected based on its centrality to the downtown,

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relative visibility and long-term presence: (1) The illegal graffiti, in the first site, was

recorded when it occurred on private buildings within a two-block radius of the

downtown center. Specific locations of focus were under a railroad bridge on 7th Avenue

where a semi-sheltered area provides a protected yet visible wall surface. The wall is

located on the periphery of the core and is somewhat hidden from the busy streets. (2)

Other illegal graffiti was recorded on buildings along the two major commercial streets,

4th and 5th Avenues, where little or no protection was available for the writers. (3) The

legal graffiti was documented on a legal graffiti wall located in an alley on the back of a

local non-profit volunteer-run Capitol Theater in the center of town on 5th Avenue.

The Population

Olympia, the capital of Washington State, has a population of approximately

42,500. Olympia’s population has a high concentration of college students and state

workers. In addition to being the capital city, it is home to The Evergreen State College

(TESC), a progressive, public liberal arts and sciences college, with a student population

of about 4,300. TESC is located seven miles outside of downtown; as a result the student

population has a large presence in the downtown core area. However, with campus

somewhat outside of the downtown core, the student population does not fully dominate

the downtown. In addition to a significant student and state worker population, Olympia

has a strong arts community, which includes many TESC graduates who remain in the

city after graduation. There are numerous art studios, performance spaces, galleries and

several independent recording studios located in the downtown core. The downtown

population mainly consists of students, state workers, local teenagers, the business

community, artists, panhandlers and other townspeople. About 6% of the population is

minorities. The commercial sector of the downtown is composed of over 200 businesses,

the majority of which are locally owned. There are not many residences downtown; the

existing ones tend to be low-income apartments.

The Overall Approach Primary methods used in this study are in-depth interviews and reviews of

published materials. In looking at Olympia’s approach to the management of graffiti, I

28

used three sets of information -- interviews with various community members directly

affected by graffiti, a local newspaper’s coverage and official city online documentation

of a public forum. The goal of this research was to examine a community’s approach to

identifying and dealing with a communication problem in public space. In designing the

research, ethnographic methods were employed. Initial themes for in-depth interviews

were formulated through participant observation during a community mural painting

event that I organized. Through subsequent in-depth interviews, the attitudes and rhetoric

of citizens regarding the uses of public space for communication were explored. Finally,

a review of the main local newspaper and community forum documents helped examine

public deliberation on the subject of public space management.

In this analysis, text was treated in the sociological tradition as a window into

human experience. Principles of Grounded Theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) were used

to approach the data collected. Following these principles, sample and theory were

allowed to develop with the progress of the project. As data were gathered and analyzed,

further data collection methods became more apparent. This allowed for the

development, refinement and interrelation of concepts to emerge as I moved along

(Charmaz, 2000).

The information was gathered without predetermined notions of structure and

classification of information. I was open to data collection without limiting the questions.

Once the various data were gathered, it was reduced to themes. Finally, as the theoretical

constructs were developed and holes exposed, I looked back to the field and collected

more data to fill the conceptual gaps. At this point theories relevant to communication

were revisited and specific topics were chosen to illuminate results of the findings.

Because this research is self-perpetuating, it may seem that it can go on

endlessly. For this reason the point of saturation served as a boundary for the research.

When new data began to fit into the categories that I defined, a “saturation” point was

achieved and the research was considered completed. As the research is revisited and

rearranged, new gaps may be discovered and new ideas further examined (Charmaz,

2000).

29

Because of the complexity of the concept of public space, qualitative research

methods were used to examine the event on a deep rather than broad level. The strength

of these methods is that they allow for an understanding of various social mechanisms

that affect communication in a community. This study is an explorative attempt to

discover what factors influence and create a system of communication in a particular

setting. This method was designed to gain an understanding of how uses of public space

for communication are socially constructed. The in-depth approach will allow the

particular social action to be mined for meaning beyond raw code.

As Taylor and Bogdan (1984) write, “language makes possible the disclosure of

the human world”; this research method adheres to the idea that knowledge is constructed

and not discovered. I also acknowledge that there is no way to experience “real relations”

and social meaning is simply a play of possibilities (Denzin, 1997). Concepts, models and

schemes are invented based on the researcher’s and the reader’s understanding, practices,

language etc., to create an explanation. I hope that these constructions will be tested and

modified by further experiences.

Sources and Interviews The sources were carefully selected based on their relationship to the graffiti

issue. Economic, political and social position was considered as a factor in the selection

criteria. A variety of interview sources were chosen in an attempt to obtain various

perspectives. The social standing in the community would reflect the source’s motivation,

knowledge and perception of the issues on the topic of public expression. For example, a

graffiti artist would have more knowledge about the networks of graffiti, a business

owner would be knowledgeable about the impact of tagging on building maintenance, the

downtown association would be aware of some policy making, etc.

People

As stated above, participants were selected for the study based on their

relationship to the downtown. Initially, twenty-two downtown pedestrians were

interviewed on the street to get at general themes regarding graffiti and in order to

develop appropriate questions for the in-depth interviews. After developing questions

30

with the help of these twenty-two informal discussions, sixteen in-depth interviews were

held with representatives of public administration, business owners, property owners,

local political activists and graffiti writers:

1. Vince Brown – attorney, local political activist, member of The Cold and Hungry coalition.

2. Pat Tassoni - editor of the local leftist newspaper, local community activist. 3. Harry Levine - manager of the Film Society- the site of the remaining free

wall. Free wall advocate. 4. Stephanie Johnson - Arts Walk coordinator, city employee. 5. Linda Oestrike - Arts Commissioner, city employee. 6. Connie Lorenz – coordinator of the Olympia Downtown Association (ODA). 7. Larry Levine - business owner, board member of the ODA. 8. Kanako Wynkoop – business owner, free graffiti wall advocate, was asked by

owner (Ray Laforge) to close the free wall on her building. 9. Judi Mendoza - business owner, building owner, shares an alley with Kanako

Wynkoop. 10. Ray Laforge – owner of the building housing Wynkoop’s business. 11. Alan McWain – business owner, building owner, neighbor to Kanako’s closed

legal wall, ODA board member. 12. Steve Cooper – property owner, owner of a building with a former free wall,

advocate of graffiti eradication, ODA board member. 13. One – tagger. 14. XX – a well-known Olympia graffiti writer, commercial mural artist. 15. XY – a respected female graffiti writer. 16. Dick Machlan – Olympia Police Department spokes person and

Administrative Services Manager, Community Conversation organizer. Newspaper and City Website

The Daily Olympian is a local mainstream newspaper that printed thirty articles,

between 1997-2002, in which graffiti was mentioned.

The City of Olympia website is an official city site where, in 2002, the Community

Conversation problem statement, questions presented for the Conversation by the City

Council, documentation of the Community Conversation, and City Council follow up

notes referencing the Community were printed. Informal Interviews

Questions for in-depth interviews were designed through preliminary informal

discussions. These discussions were conducted during Arts Walk, a local community

31

celebration of the arts. Much of the local population flocks downtown during this time to

visit receptions and art exhibits displayed in downtown businesses, other venues and the

streets. During this event, I organized a community mural where people on the streets

were invited to participate in painting a mural on a downtown building wall. In the course

of the day, twenty-two informal discussions were held (Appendix A) in order to discover

some common themes about graffiti. Participants as well as observers were interviewed.

Arts Walk was chosen due to its popularity and tendency to attract a wider population

than that which visits downtown on a daily basis. Arts Walk has also been part of the

controversy, as will become clear in the discussion of newspaper articles later in this

thesis. With its focus on the arts, high attendance and attention to city image it seemed

relevant to this research.

In-depth Interviews

The in-depth interview questions were developed from the themes that emerged in

the above discussions. As patterns emerged and as I gained more insight into attitudes

about graffiti, questions for in-depth interviews were refined. The interviews were

scheduled with interview sources as research evolved. Often those who were interviewed

recommended other informed candidates to the researcher. Contacts were made with

those who were recommended or mentioned as possible experts. I discussed the study

with the new potential sources and scheduled interviews.

The interviews were conducted face to face. Approximately one hour was spent

on in-depth interviews with each source. The interview was recorded on tape and then

transcribed on paper. General questions were followed by probing questions depending

on the information revealed (Appendix B). Benefits and Ethics

This research might be beneficial to Olympia in that it strives to achieve a clearer

understanding of the mechanisms involved in refining the quality of life in a community.

All of the in-depth interview sources expressed interest in seeing the results of the

research. While holding different ideologies and coming from a variety of backgrounds,

the participants were all interested in improving their community’s quality of life. It is

32

therefore in their interest to gain a better picture of the dynamics and issues surrounding

graffiti, communication and public space. Currently there is no clear solution for all

involved in this issue. In addition to contributing to the academic community in the

exploration of a communication phenomenon, this study hopes to provide a reciprocal

benefit to the community that serves as its subject. Creating a space where various voices

and ideas can be represented in one document, I attempt to provide a cohesive collection

of ideas that might assist the community members in making informed decisions

regarding their public space.

As a member of the community for ten years, I have been an organizer of a

community murals program and I am an advocate for legal graffiti walls. On one hand

this might present an objectivity problem. One could argue that I might not be able to

distance myself from my opinion during the interviews. However, every researcher goes

into a research project with an opinion, and it is every researcher’s challenge to overcome

preconceived notions and to be open to the gathering of data that might be unexpected.

The benefit of being a member of the community is that I am already an insider

and I enjoy the trust of many community members. The subjects might therefore be

inclined to be more open with their answers. Being an insider is also helpful in analyzing

the results by having a baseline of meaning and context (Fetterman, 1989). The

challenge, however, is to also be able to gain distance from the community in order to see

the panoramic view. There is also a possibility that the sources would be inclined to give

answers that they think would please the researcher. This was minimized by probing and

non-judgmental inquiry.

The ethical considerations in this study mostly include the effect that this study

might have on those involved in the interviews. Since some graffiti is created as an illegal

action, the graffiti artists interviewed might be implicated if their names were revealed.

This was avoided by conducting the interviews anonymously. An informant contacted

graffiti writers and obtained an agreement to be interviewed. The writers then contacted

the researcher and agreed to be interviewed without revealing their true names. In this

study, fictitious names were assigned to the graffiti writers.

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Another ethical consideration in ethnography is the outsider implications of a

researcher coming into a community with the intent to “study the people.” This is

avoided to the extent that I am already a member of the community. The study not only

benefits me in enabling my thesis completion, it is also useful in that it aims to compile

information, and presents an opportunity for self-reflection to the community.

The following three chapters will present findings from the investigation of the

three different sources described above. The results of conversations with community

members and a review of printed materials revealed common patterns in deliberation

about the governance of public space. The next chapter will highlight the themes

discovered in the course of conversations with individual community members. Chapter

five will focus on the recurring topics found in the articles of The Daily Olympian, a local

newspaper. Finally, chapter six will cover the themes found in the official reports of a

public forum known as the Community Conversation. Discussion of the findings from

these three sources will follow in chapter seven.

34

Figure 10. A detail from “Hollywood Africans," by Jean Michel Basquiat, from a show at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Chapter Four: Findings - Conversations with Individuals Sixteen members of the downtown Olympia community talked at length with the

author; all are affected by or involved with the graffiti controversy. Several themes

recurred in the interviews that helped understand the community’s management

approach. The themes described below have been divided into the following sections: (1)

types of graffiti, (2) costs and benefits, (3) culprits and (4) attitudes towards graffiti.

Types of Graffiti Tags/gang vs. pieces

All of the people

interviewed expressed

some awareness of various

types of graffiti. The most

common distinction was

noted between tags and

pieces. Informants almost

unanimously referred to

tags as vandalism and

“graffiti” as art (pieces).

This distinction came up

in interviews from those

seeking strictest control

of graffiti, as well as graffiti writers themselves. In her tiny downtown office housed in

one of the buildings owned by Steve Cooper, Connie Lorenz, the ODA coordinator, talks

about problems with tagging. She adds, however, that there has been some “good art” in

graffiti culture. Dick Machlan, the police spokesman, echoes her sentiments:

They choose to do it sometimes where it amounts to vandalism. But some people are very talented artists. I make a distinction between that and graffiti. Graffiti is artistic expression (Machlan, interviewed 2002).

35

Figure 11. May Day Revolt graffiti in a train tunnel, Olympia

Along the same lines, One, a prolific Olympia tagger, agrees that the motivation for

tagging is not artistic expression, but rather what Blume calls proof of existence. On a

couch, under a silk-screened poster of Che Guevara, One tells me that tagging is a

routine, “it’s not art; it’s leaving evidence of your existence,” he explains.

A connection was also made between tagging and gang graffiti. Often tags were

seen as gang related. Tagging was associated with marking territory. Frequently, feelings

of threat or intimidation were mentioned when speaking of tags. A common assumption

was that the presence of tags signaled the presence of rival gangs marking territory. For

example, in our conversation, Stephanie Johnson, Arts Walk coordinator, contrasted the

New York graffiti’s role in art with Olympia’s tags.

Part of the issue is the difference between graffiti and tagging. Tagging for a boundary or a gang is threatening. I think graffiti of NY on trains with colors and shapes etc, as an art form. Basquiat, Haring they emerged from that genre, but what I see in my neighborhood is this black symbol marking a territory (Johnson, interviewed 2002).

Steve Cooper, a downtown property owner and board member of the ODA, was aware of

three types of graffiti. Like Johnson, he also associated tags with gangs, but reluctantly

admitted to some being art and identified the third category as political graffiti.

Gang tagging in Olympia is ominous and intimidating, political writing is well intended… some graffiti is art and I wrestle with it, but I think all three are destructive…(Cooper, interviewed 2002).

Political

Political graffiti was mentioned less often and was distinguished from other

graffiti by people like Cooper, who exhibited a more sophisticated knowledge of the

36

Figure 12. Free wall, Capitol Theater

graffiti culture due to long-term graffiti management efforts. ODA coordinator Connie

Lorenz recounted that graffiti seems to increase during political activism in Olympia,

Around May Day there is more graffiti, some get nasty – “f-you city; boff a cop; revolt; down with big business” (Lorenz, interviewed 2002).

Since 1998, celebration of May Day has been an annual and highly controversial

reclamation of the streets and a demonstration of resistance. It is mostly organized by and

associated with radical youth and the liberal subculture in Olympia. In Figure 11, a writer

calls for other “graff” (graffiti) writers to “get ready” for May Day, a “festival of

resistance." “Revolt! Get yo shit ready for Arts Walk” is the message on the opposite

end. Both May Day and Arts Walk, occuring within a few weeks of each other, generate

this type of communication in the realm of the subculture.

Machlan, speaking in his office at the Police Department, added another

observation that in addition to reflecting local politics, this type of graffiti increases

during international political tensions,

From a standpoint of police – we run in cycles. Depending on what the legislature is doing, national/international issues. We have people who are avid followers of international politics. So things happening around the world are of interest to locals, so when passionate issues are involved, they tend to be reflected in what we see around town (Machlan, interviewed 2002).

In the photographs taken during the course of this study,

political graffiti does seem to be indicative of

international political events. In the process of

documentation, many instances of political writing such

as the SERB graffiti (figure 12), painted during the

conflict in former Yugoslavia, were photographed.

Costs and Benefits Expression

Two main arguments were raised in discussing the pros and cons of graffiti.

Expression was the primary reason given when justifying graffiti. Vandalism was used to

justify graffiti control. Most sources declared some elements of both to be valid. Whether

37

with approval or disapproval, it was generally agreed that some sort of a message or

communication was made using street walls in an attempt to reach the public. With a

philosophical attitude, Machlan considered the difficulty of graffiti eradication:

Unless we change the nature of our country and change the nature in which we view freedom of speech I think that there always will be people who choose to use that particular avenue as one of the ways in which they communicate themselves…Is it particularly effective? I don’t happen to think so (Machlan, interviewed 2002).

While it was agreed that writing on the walls is expression, disagreement persisted as to

the effectiveness of the writing as a mode of communication. Talking about the same

Arts Walk event, normally at-odds-neighbors and business owners Wynkoop and

McWain agreed on one thing -- there was a message:

Last Arts Walk twenty crusty punks and some hippies took markers and vandalized the alley…it was no graffiti, just scribble on the wall, but I liked the messages (Wynkoop, interviewed 2002).

The big outbreak was last Arts Walk. I wasn’t here, but it was about 100-150 people. That graffiti was criticizing police; I guess this is someone’s idea of expression (McWain, interviewed 2002). Those who defended the writing as effective often saw it as an alternative medium

for public expression in a society where access to public communication is otherwise

restricted. Vince Brown, an attorney, local activist and homeless advocate, defended

illegal writing as “sometimes the only way to make people pay attention." Graffiti writer

One talked about graffiti writing as a competition for having an individual voice in a

society inundated with messages from institutions of power:

Everywhere you look in society there are words speaking to you, street signs, laws, amazing amounts of media coming at you from all directions, and that normal people just can’t put their words out there is a form of suppressing their freedom of expression (One, interviewed 2002).

Pessimistic about obtaining equal access to the media, local business owner Larry Levine

also articulated a common attitude that venues for expression in the media provide

limited access for the marginal groups:

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Figure 13. May Day graffiti information

There will never be equal access to the media; it’s not going to be that way. Even though the Internet has allowed access, don’t fool yourself that even indymedia.org provides as much access as Time Warner (L. Levine, interviewed 2002).

In certain situations, marginal groups may not desire access to mass media. Prior to the

May Day street party, walls served as a

medium to reach a selected audience. In

order to prevent interference from

authorities, the time and location of the

street party were publicly undisclosed.

However, on short notice, graffiti

informed those who read the walls, that

on May 1st at 12:34 pm, the May Day festivities would begin in the Value Village parking

lot (figure 13).

Vandalism

As mentioned earlier, many arguments against graffiti revolved around

vandalism. It was seen to cause two main types of damage: damage to physical property

and damage to the business community by driving consumers away from the downtown.

According to Cooper, the property owner, graffiti can cost hundreds of dollars in clean

up. Most damaging are the window etchings that require replacement of the entire

window. McWain, also a property and business owner, complained about permanent

damage that graffiti can cause to highly porous sandstone buildings.

In most cases, the hit spots require a coat of paint and it is the time lost in

covering up recurring graffiti that becomes costly to a business. The burden of cleanup

often falls on the business owners as they try, driven by the Broken Windows theory, to

prevent more graffiti by covering it up as soon as any appears. Lorenz, a graffiti

eradication advocate, sees this as damaging to the already struggling businesses in the

face of a faltering economy:

39

Most people think that these are rich people, who own these businesses, but most of them struggle and don’t own the buildings and it’s expensive to maintain them; especially this last year has been hard (Lorenz, interviewed 2002). Some business owners write it into their normal operating expenses. Business

neighbors Judy Mendoza and Kanako Wynkoop saw it as a small price to pay for the

benefit of having a legal graffiti wall. Their neighbor, Allan McWain, disagreed on the

benefits of having a legal wall, but accepted graffiti removal as part of business, saying,

“I don’t take it personally; it’s part of the operating expense” (McWain, interviewed

2002).

Further keeping with the Broken Windows theory, the main damage to the

business community was seen in that graffiti, as a sign of disorder, perpetuates fear of the

downtown and drives consumers away to more controlled environments. Highly

controlled environments of malls, which would be deemed unconstitutional on public

streets, become more appealing in the face of perceived danger. As a result, the business

community downtown must compete for consumers with the mall on the outskirts of

town. Downtown is not as crucial to consumer needs as it was in the past, remarks

McWain, and signs of disorder make it even more difficult to retain consumers:

Suburban sprawl definitely affects the downtown. When I was a kid all other services were around here, drugstore, dentist etc. now you don’t need to come downtown. So to get people down here is tough and when they do come if they are offended by graffiti, transients, youth on skateboards they won’t rub shoulders (McWain, interviewed 2002).

Culprits

The preceding quote highlights the third major theme in the conversations about

graffiti. Graffiti is associated with types of people considered undesirable to a vital city.

These “bad seeds” are often mentioned when talking about the Broken Windows’ signs

of disorder. Mostly these people, associated with bad behaviors, also offer no commercial

interest to a downtown. Aside from being non-consumers they are believed to deter

commercial activity and therefore tend to be seen as undesirable. The major categories of

people believed to be perpetrators of bad behaviors, which repeatedly surfaced in the

conversations, were outlaws, street people, youth and outsiders. Associations were drawn

40

with these groups in discussions about undesirable behaviors such as graffiti,

panhandling, skateboarding or just “hanging out” on the street without an apparent

purpose.

Outlaws

That all-American notion of the outlaw is central to graffiti culture (Cooper and

Chalfant, 1984; Brewer, 1992; Ferrell, 1996; Dennant, 1997). The outlaw archetype

embodies American society's historic distrust of authority. Since the days of the Wild

West and the American Revolution, the desperado image has been a symbol of an

American folk hero-- a subversive trickster and warrior who challenges institutions of

authority (House, 1993). Machlan describes the outlaw quality of illegal writing in

revolutionary terminology:

Legal walls give them a venue where they will not get in trouble…At the same time, for a few, I think guerilla fashion is part of the nature of the beast (Machlan, interviewed 2002).

According to attorney Vince Brown, breaking the law in the face of danger as well as the

violation of private property on an ideological principle is part of the graffiti writing

allure. Similarly, tagger One describes his attraction to illegal writing in a romanticized

rebellious way where the theft of paint becomes a courageous ideological stance against

big business, big brother and commodification,

It means you have the balls to steal paints and write illegally. Best thieves go after big business. That’s if you really have guts…soon there will be a camera everywhere. Pretty soon you will have to be paid to do your art…I am a bomber [tagger], I am more into illegal stuff (One, interviewed 2002).

At the same time authority figures tend to see it more as a capricious act of childish

rebellion and a nuisance rather than a heroic statement. Many refer to the writers as bad

children gone astray. Linda Oestrike, the Olympia Arts Commissioner, talks about the

unwillingness of writers to compromise with public authority in negotiating rules for

legal walls, adding a maternal angle:

There are too many restrictions and I am not sure that graffiti writers would want to compromise…that’s the mom in me talking (Oestrike, interviewed 5/6/2002).

41

Business owner and ODA member Larry Levine expresses a different perspective with

respect to legal walls. He is aware of the distaste in the outlaw culture for the patronizing

quality of designated protest zones:

Binghamton, NY had a graffiti block where people did graffiti, but I also can see people resenting that kind of control with someone telling them “here is your little protest zone” (L. Levine, interviewed 2002).

Street people

Many of the conversations about graffiti shifted from graffiti control to the homeless.

Graffiti remained in the discourse as a problem behavior, but the homeless were

associated with graffiti and other issues related to control of the streets. On a late

morning, over tepid coffee, Vince Brown and I discussed graffiti politics in a grungy

anarchist coffee shop. A member of the homeless advocacy group known as the Cold and

Hungry Coalition, Vince explains the “zero-tolerance” policy trends. The shutting down

of mental institutions, he tells me, and the influx of mentally ill ex-patients into the cities,

caused the cities to grasp for control in initiating civility laws targeted at signs of

disorder. He blames this perceived need for increased social control on inadequate social

services that left the mentally ill without sufficient resources and the citizens scared of

the streets.

Fifteen years ago deinstitutionalization caused change, no services were provided so many crazy people became homeless and they scared people. So cities are trying to figure out how to control it. The “we’re tough” image is a way to attract people. Seattle’s civility laws are an example (Brown, interviewed 2002). Steve Cooper, a downtown developer, also directly associated graffiti writing with

homeless advocacy. In line with the outlaw-hero notion described above, he brought up

graffiti writing as a symbolic conflict between what he called “the haves and the have-

nots." He perceived a correlation between his efforts to gain an image as a “good guy” in

working with street people, and the reduction of graffiti,

I’ve gotten active in working with people of the street. I don’t think the homeless write graffiti, but I have gotten a better reputation and if you are not known as the “bad guy,” it backs people off…I think it had an effect on graffiti, I think the political graffiti was reduced (Cooper, interviewed 2002).

42

It is hard not to note that graffiti also had an effect on Steve. Trying to rid his walls of the

political graffiti criticizing his actions, Steve has gotten involved in a dialogue and

cooperative efforts with the Cold and Hungry Coalition. Graffiti writers have effectively

motivated Steve to try to become "a good guy" and negotiate with social rights advocates.

For those who argued that political graffiti is not an effective way to communicate

change, this might be evidence to the contrary.

Youth

Looking back at the quote by Wilson and Kelling in the Broken Windows theory

discussion of this thesis, uncontrolled youth is another sign of disorder in a city perceived

subject to decay. Rowdy children and teenagers gathering in front of the “corner store”

are seen as a sign of impending crime (Wilson and Kelling, 1982). Like graffiti and street

people, youths are increasingly blamed for the social inadequacies of the city (Hoerl,

2002). In the interviews, a critical attitude prevailed towards kids who are perceived to

lack discipline.

Besides shopping, there are not many activities available to teenagers in the city

downtown. Aside from having a legal graffiti wall, the Capitol Theater has been the only

consistent all-ages music venue in Olympia. During the weekends, kids flock to the

backstage punk rock shows and hang out in the alleys outside, leaning on walls and

crouching on curbs in the dead of night. In his cluttered office at the Capitol Theater,

manager Harry Levine defends “the kids,” saying that business owners have an

unrealistic fear of the youth. In trying to shut down the graffiti wall many business

owners told him that they were not “against graffiti” but “against kids acting badly."

Levine reports that it was difficult to communicate to those business owners that the

theatre has not had any problems with any of the kids, and no damage has ever been done

to the theater by the kids. Harry attributes this to the mutual respect between the teens

and the theater.

Ray LaForge, property and business owner, explains the business perspective as

safety issues associated with signs of disorder crop up once again. Youth (skateboarders

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and punks), graffiti and panhandlers generally become a reason for the potential patrons

to feel unsafe:

Businesses are subject to clientele who come in and say that downtown is deteriorating, there are skateboarders and punks everywhere, so graffiti becomes symbolic of that encroachment… Patrons want no panhandling, no graffiti—they want to feel safe (LaForge, interviewed 2002).

Now a successful downtown business owner in his fifties, LaForge admits that much of

this is due to perception. He himself recounts being such a sign of disorder in his own

youth, showing certain irreverence towards convention. He recounts starting up his now

booming business, as a young hippie. According to LaForge, when he opened up the

small bike shop in town, his long hair conjured up some fear and anxiety among many of

the established business owners in town.

Outsiders

Another category of people blamed for disorder in the city is that of outsiders –

both business owners and graffiti writers. Outsider business owners were blamed for the

lack of accountability. Lorenz explains the graffiti eradication action taken by the ODA

as a necessary step because building owners were not aware or did not want to “open up a

can of worms” with their tenants. She explains that their inactivity was the route of least

resistance. As long as absentee owners were getting rent payments, they were not

concerned with the city’s vitality.

At the same time, many graffiti eradication proponents were frustrated with the

lack of accountability on the part of graffiti writers. Accountability for the legal walls

was seen as difficult to achieve because of the outsider graffiti writers. Interview sources

were aware that people who come from out of town might not know or respect the rules

of the legal walls. As a result, this lack of accountability from the outsider writers was

one of the reasons for the difficulty in keeping legal walls contained. Kanako Wynkoop,

business owner and graffiti wall advocate, believes that writers from out of town cause

most vandalism in town:

It has to do with the underground networking of writers not having places to live, they just travel around and tag wherever they go. Kids do come from out of town

44

to vandalize here. Kids here don’t do that much damage (Wynkoop, interviewed 2002).

Furthermore, lack of accountability was closely associated with those outside of the

managing process. Some sources, like Arts Commissioner Linda Oestrike, expressed

frustration with the graffiti writers’ inability to police each other. While boundaries could

be negotiated with some writers, those outside the negotiating groups were seen as likely

to disrespect those boundaries:

There have been self-policing claims within the group but I am not sure that works. People who want to do that; self-police but then others come along and wreck it (Oestrike, interviewed 2002). Harry Levine, manager of the volunteer-run film society housed in the Capitol

Theater, expressed skepticism towards the expectation that the writers must “self-police."

Kids who originally maintained the graffiti wall on the Capitol Theater eventually left

and it has been difficult to keep up with new writers who might have no connections to

each other. There is no organization for the writers as a group; “it’s just people coming to

paint,” said Levine. The maintenance solutions cannot be realistically demanded from

the writers because of their transient and undefined culture. Currently it is the ODA that

maintains the area around the legal graffiti wall on the Capitol Theater building. Partially

funded by the city, the ODA was able to create a part-time position for graffiti

maintenance. The business organization has taken on the responsibility to uphold their

agenda of clean walls. “Now it’s all working pretty hunky dory,” said Levine reclining in

the tattered Naugahyde office chair of the non-profit organization.

Attitudes Perspectives varied in talking about graffiti management. Several themes

influenced the different opinions regarding how to best approach the issue. Naturally,

those who perceived graffiti to be damaging were more concerned with developing

strategies to manage graffiti. The themes that emerged in the conversations, therefore,

largely focus around safety issues with respect to graffiti. Broken Windows, the third-

person paradox, powerlessness and social norms are identified as the major topics that

45

influenced the attitudes towards graffiti management. These four themes are discussed

bellow.

Broken Windows

Unsurprisingly, the Broken Windows theory was a running theme in talking about

how to approach graffiti management. In a somewhat eerie fashion, the sources reiterated

the theory as if they had thought of it during the interview. Machlan, probably due to his

longtime work in the police department and familiarity with criminology, was the only

person to identify the concept as a formal theory,

The other thing is the Broken Windows theory – if something looks bad it tends to be bad (Machlan, interviewed 2002).

Aside from Machlan, no one else mentioned the theory itself, but instead brought up the

broken window example. Connie Lorenz makes a reference to the theory in explaining

the need for better boundaries in controlling graffiti:

I’ve been on this job close to five years and when I first started there were…free walls, but there was no defining where they were; where they weren’t. So you’d find it kind of like a broken window. If you start graffiti in one place I guess its ok to do it over here because nobody says anything if you don’t (Lorenz, interviewed 2002).

In a similar fashion, business owner Larry Levine explains the need for immediate clean

up of graffiti:

It's sort of like when you have a building and there is a smashed window, its really smart to replace that window because it gets this effect like “oh this is smashed, this is slummy,” no one cares about it and then, I think it tends to attract more smashed windows. It’s like this slippery slope (L. Levine, interviewed 2002).

The Third-Person Paradox

An interesting perception paradox surfaced during the analysis of the attitudes

towards graffiti. All of the sources seemed to agree that they are not personally

threatened by graffiti, but that the public perceives graffiti as threatening.

My interview with Steve Cooper, a downtown property developer, took place in

New Caledonia, a newly constructed shopping arcade in the center of downtown. The

46

arcade is an enclosed passage of shops illuminated with skylights creating the feeling of

being outdoors. We sat on a bench near a gurgling miniature fountain. Across from us

was a small office space donated by Steve to the Olympia Police Department to house the

street patrol. According to Cooper, its owner and builder, the arcade is designed to

simulate an Old Italian street where people could come to shop and enjoy being in public.

While he admitted to feeling safe downtown, Cooper blamed graffiti as one of the

reasons for the image of downtown being a dangerous place. Graffiti’s threatening effect

on others is echoed throughout the interviews.

It threatens especially senior citizens. Am I personally threatened? No, but the bottom line is that graffiti is intimidating, even the artistic type, to a fairly large segment of the population (Cooper, interviewed 2002).

In subsequent interviews, none of the sources themselves expressed personal fear

or anxiety over graffiti. However, a unanimous agreement reigned that potential

consumers, especially the elderly, associate graffiti with crime. Judy Mendoza, owner of

Otto's bagel shop and its building, was mostly concerned for the elderly. “Tagging might

scare off older people,” she said. As a result of this threatening effect on others, stricter

control of the streets was seen as necessary. Graffiti was blamed for scaring “the gray

haired” consumers away from the downtown area and redirecting them toward the more

controlled environment of the mall. McWain thought the mall was more inviting for the

elderly to go on their promenades:

It damages the business. People think there are gangs hanging out here; there is this perception that is a problem. I don’t feel threatened by it… I never had a fear of Olympia, but our customers do. Elderly customers are intimidated and are scared by it…Perception is out there. People go to malls and walk, but here they won’t walk (McWain, interviewed 2002).

Ray LaForge observed that other business owners have anxiety over graffiti:

Business owners are scared of graffiti because it’s a sign of disorder. I don’t feel threatened by graffiti (LaForge, interviewed 2002).

Likewise, Connie Lorenz justified her concern with graffiti, reiterating that this perceived

threat is potentially damaging to business because it scares consumers away:

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Most people don’t understand graffiti and think it’s gang related…Graffiti has potential to damage business because people don’t understand it (Lorenz, interviewed 2002).

During a conversation in a booth at the Spar, the historic diner/cigar-shop filled

with old photographs of loggers and staffed by grumpy waitresses, McWain displayed the

paradox of the third-person effect. Acknowledging that public anxiety might be

constructed, and asserting that he is not influenced by these constructions, he nevertheless

called for stricter regulation. His argument was based on the premise that even if

constructed, these fears are real to others:

It’s probably unfair that they blame it on the youth or the transients or panhandlers, but its still a fact. When you read in the paper often enough that there are problems downtown; people start thinking there are problems downtown. Real or imaginary-- it's in their mind. They don’t want to go downtown. I come downtown and I have no problems. But people would be afraid to (McWain, interviewed 2002).

There were other times when mass media were brought up in contributing to the

construction of the downtown as a dangerous place. Machlan attributed some of the

misperceptions to media representations:

Graffiti does not affect the safety itself, but the perception of safety. There are a lot of individuals who do not know the difference between gang graffiti, tagging, art and social commentary. What they do think is probably because of the media as much as anything else. They associate everything with gangs (Machlan, interviewed 2002).

Finally, while noting the perceptions of others, the conservative views of McWain

and those of liberal Brown found a common ground in that -- despite the perceptions of

others --Olympia is not a dangerous place. Brown stated that “Olympia is vibrant

compared to other towns; the problem is, in part, perception.” McWain backed up this

assertion:

Perception is out there. I don’t know how to alleviate it. I don’t think people know how good they have it here. They don’t appreciate it. Out of towners love it, but locals turn their backs (McWain, interviewed 2002).

48

Literature on the third-person effect supports these findings. Third-person studies

predict that people perceive media messages to exert greater persuasive power over

people other than themselves, and as a result they crave more control over media

(Davison, 1983). Since 1983, Davison's hypothesis has been supported by numerous

studies (Perloff, 1993, 1999). Research on the third-person effect implies that people may

support restrictions on media messages because they "anticipate, or think they perceive,

some [undesirable] reaction on the part of others." Recently, Davison (1996) approved of

depicting this effect as a generalized form of perception--"third-person perception."

Generalization is not necessary in this thesis, however, since it has been suggested earlier

that the street may indeed be a medium of communication.

Powerlessness

Finally, there was an attitude of powerlessness expressed in the face of the above

paradox. According to the sources in favor of graffiti eradication, a variety of solutions

have been attempted and all of them failed to eliminate the perceived fear or graffiti. The

perception of fear prevails, despite the fact that downtown is a safe place. Connie Lorenz

points out that funds, time and energy are necessary to change perception. She also adds a

doubt that there is a willingness to expand those resources:

I think there are certain things that people won’t understand…once there is a

perception in somebody’s mind it’s really hard to change it unless you have a lot

of money for an education process, and I don’t know that anyone is willing to

spend that time and energy (Lorenz, interviewed 2002).

Social Norms

Different perspectives related to social norms also seemed to affect attitudes

toward graffiti management. Larry Levine notes that there is a difference of philosophies

regarding ownership. He points out that people might disagree with the accepted norms

regarding ownership, and that the existing norms might not necessarily be right:

You can get into discussions about what makes this window yours or what makes this land yours. It’s not that norms are not a problematic concept, because once it was within societal norm to have slaves. So it’s good to have a continuous dialogue (L. Levine, interviewed 2002).

49

Figure 14. Arrg. This culture’s killing me

Lorenz and McWain both reflect on different beliefs regarding ownership:

I often wonder when people tag like that on people’s property; do they have property of their own? One of the arguments was “a blank wall makes me nauseous”…well if you own the building I guess you can do what you want with it…We need to respect the right of property owners, we need to respect the right of …well maybe not the right of the artists (Lorenz, interviewed 2002).

Lorenz wonders if the taggers lack respect for property due to the fact that they might not

own property and therefore not understand the impact that they make. Her perspective is

straightforward; ownership of property gives one the right to do as they please with it,

and others have no right to alter it in any way. She seems clear that property rights trump

any of the rights for expression on that property. Downtown property owner McWain,

also unsympathetic to writers, is aware that some might feel justified in violating his

building walls because the walls are public:

There’s thinking “its public space” even if it is my building, they think that they can do what they want (McWain, interviewed 2002).

After addressing the property vs. expression topic,

discussions also progress towards more abstract

ideas. Lorenz’s recollection of a graffiti writer’s

declaration, “a blank wall makes me nauseous” is

repeated in other conversations. Police

spokesperson Machlan and tagger One agree that

personal perceptions are a matter of attitude and preference toward social norms:

It’s a taste, like people who like green lawns…a lot of people like graffiti on walls…I don’t deface, I beautify (One, interviewed 2002). Some people feel perfectly comfortable; some never go [downtown because] they don’t like pink hair, but there is nothing inherently dangerous about pink hair (Machlan, interviewed 2002).

Likewise, McWain explains his attitude towards all graffiti as vandalism because of his

preference for blank walls and distaste for “abstract art,”

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Its just vandalism, most of it is just vandalism…I am too literal, I don’t understand the abstract art. I prefer blank walls (McWain, interviewed 2002).

Besides issues of personal taste, differences in attitudes based on ideological principles

also came up in conversations. According to Wynkoop, the young owner of a thrift-store

named Dumpster Values, punks who write political graffiti mistrust her because she owns

a business. Business ownership is counter to the punk/anarchist attitude towards social

norms and especially capitalism. Because of her compliance in shutting down the legal

wall to stay in business she gained a reputation among some writers as being

untrustworthy due to her business interests and therefore ideological differences1.

Going a little bit further with the capitalist concept, Levine points out that

commercial culture has an advantage over graffiti in that it points to a difference between

sanctioned and unsanctioned public writing. Being legal, commercial writing saturates

the public realm to a degree that the offensive is seen as normal:

I do not have a positive reaction to tagging, it can involve property destruction…but I feel equally bad when I see stupid billboards, that’s offensive but it’s legal that’s the difference (L. Levine, interviewed 2002).

Levine points out those legal avenues for expression, such as billboards, can also produce

socially undesirable effects. He tells me that perhaps graffiti exists as a counterbalance to

some “heinous marketing messages that are socially accepted because people are

accustomed to them."

1 Ray LaForge, Wynkoop’s landlord, asked her to close the graffiti wall that she had opened on the side of her business. Although an advocate of free walls, she did so in order to maintain a good relationship with her landlord. In turn, LaFroge explained that closing of the wall was due to pressure placed on him by the ODA and his desire to maintain a good relationship with the ODA and the business community. This "pressure" was despite Lorenz's earlier assertion that owning property gives you the right to "do what you want." This is a great example of the subtle governance of public space that takes place through unofficial social networks.

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Chapter Five: Findings - Mass Mediated Conversations

This chapter will report themes regarding graffiti as found in the articles of a local

newspaper. Public conversations about graffiti were reported in The Daily Olympian

dating back to 1997. The review spans a period of five years and five months, ending in

spring 2002. 2 The Daily Olympian was selected because it is the mainstream Olympia

newspaper that serves the majority of the population of Olympia and is the most

prominent newspaper in the area. This source was reviewed to examine the conversation

in the local mass media about graffiti management. In contrast to the individual opinions

explored in the personal interviews above, this chapter provides a broad public

conversation perspective.

As stated above, The Daily Olympian was a major source of articles on graffiti. In

the twenty-nine articles retrieved from the archives, the frequency of articles varied

directly with changes in public policy and public debate about graffiti. During this period,

there were two spikes in the frequency of articles that mentioned graffiti. The numbers of

articles that appeared each year in The Daily Olympian are listed below:

1997 (Jan-Dec) – 1 2000 (Jan-Dec) – 3

1998 (Jan-Dec) – 2 2001 (Jan-Dec) – 5

1999 (Jan-Dec) – 11 2002 (Jan-May)3 – 8

Graffiti coverage increased in early 1999 and again in 2002. In both instances the spikes

followed the implementation of management policies that affected graffiti. The 1999

agenda focused on debates about graffiti as vandalism vs. graffiti as a form of expression.

In 2002 the agenda shifted to identifying graffiti as vandalism and anti-social behavior.

2 Due to the limitations of space, a study of the alternative local papers was omitted from this thesis. Three alternative publications distributed in the downtown area were also identified as having articles dealing with the graffiti issue. Because the majority of the articles were found in The Daily Olympian, and due to its large circulation and more frequent publications, it was chosen as a source for this study. Further studies of the alternative papers could, however, enhance this research. 3 Only articles printed in the first five months of the year 2002 were collected due to the time constraints of the research.

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1999: Free Walls As shown in Figure 17 the first spike appeared in 1999. This followed the attempt

by Olympia Downtown Association (ODA) to shut down all of the legal graffiti walls in

downtown Olympia. The ODA saw free walls as a nuisance and an encouragement to

illegal graffiti. ODA members expressed frustration with a lack of accountability in

graffiti writers’ ability to self-manage the free graffiti walls. An article following the wall

closings quotes Connie Lorenz, the coordinator of ODA, on ending the free-to-paint

zones:

“It’s gotten very rampant, in recent months, the graffiti has spread from legal walls to nearby businesses, garbage cans, newspaper boxes, even trees”…tagging makes downtown look neglected and shoppers feel unsafe, she said. “When people see graffiti of any kind, they think it’s dangerous (The Daily Olympian, 3/14/99).

ODA saw the graffiti spill over beyond the free wall area onto other city and private

property and saw it as threatening for business.

However, ODA’s action sparked an outcry from the public; many called ODA’s

move autocratic and defended graffiti as a form of expression to be protected in public

space. During this period, The Daily Olympian served as a forum for discussion on

graffiti. Anti-graffiti opinion was balanced with several long articles defending the merits

of graffiti. In 1999 six of eleven articles that appeared in The Daily Olympian talked

about some positive aspect of graffiti and acknowledged its expressive value. A letter to

the editor read:

Graffiti does not just come about like dirt on the sidewalk…[it is] a method of expressing…for some reason obnoxious advertising, flashing lights and

Figure 15. Graffiti on dumpsters near the free wall

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whitewashed walls are more inviting than vernacular art in the alleys (The Daily Olympian, 4/9/99).

Over half of the articles were either neutral or presented an argument for retaining some

free graffiti walls. The Olympia Film

Society set up a forum between the

business community and graffiti writers in

response to the ODA action to shut down

all walls. The Daily Olympian printed an

article that described the forum’s debates

and the conundrum of graffiti as artistic expression and vandalism:

…Downtown business owners reiterated that they were upset with the tagging outside their buildings. “My concern with tagging is that it takes away from the viability of our downtown,” said Terry Ziniewicz, owner of Dancing Goats Espresso… ”I’m not really pleased with the situation. I’m not a tagger, I don’t do illegal work,” said Ben Taylor, a graffiti artist. “I don’t see how you can commemorate Arts Walk this year by ‘illegalizing’ art,” graffiti artist Anthony Acock said…Business owners said they like the art, but not the tagging that is expensive to clean up… “Without it, the city will lose an important cultural site,” said Jeffrey Bartone, the film society’s technical director. “If the city shuts down its free graffiti walls because of a handful of malicious taggers, the vandals will win. That’s all that will be left if we take down the free walls,” he said (The Daily Olympian, 3/19/99).

On the same day, in an editorial, The Daily Olympian published the following article

proposing legal walls as one of the solutions to illegal graffiti (crediting Olympia’s

former police chief with the Broken Windows Theory):

As part of the preparation for this spring’s Arts Walk celebration, all of the illegal graffiti will be covered up. “Arts Walk is a time for the downtown to shine and sparkle,” said Connie Lorenz, coordinator of the Olympia Downtown Association. The trick is going to be keeping the vile graffiti from returning. We believe the solution to this problem is threefold: Covering up graffiti as soon as it is detected.

Figure 16. Revolt! War on the ODA they paint Oly[mpia] gray. Of all colors!

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Figure 17. Graffiti dot

Firm prosecution of those caught defacing…the creation of legal walls. Former Olympia Police chief John Wurner had a no tolerance policy for graffiti. He calls it his “broken window theory”…(The Daily Olympian, 3/19/99).

The remaining five articles, like the one below, refer to graffiti as vandalism and praise

the city “cleanup” efforts:

About fifty volunteers spent much of their time painting walls that were defaced with graffiti (The Daily Olympian, 9/16/99).

One article does not speak about graffiti directly, but touches on the issues of perception.

It begins with the question:

How do you see downtown Olympia? Is it a place where shoppers have to dodge panhandlers and confront people with weird hair and body markings, or do you see downtown Olympia as a fun and eclectic place…? The goal of the Olympia Downtown Association is to create a downtown that is clean, inviting and friendly…Merchants, professionals and residents have to spread the word that downtown Olympia is a safe, inviting, entertaining place to be (The Daily Olympian, 4/22/99).

These articles document a public process that led to reaching a graffiti

management policy. In an effort to combat vandalism, the ODA made a move to shut

down all of the legal graffiti walls in Olympia. Merchants who comprise the membership

of the ODA argued that illegal graffiti is vandalism against private

property and that it has a damaging effect on the downtown’s vitality.

The vitality was described in terms of attracting consumers to the

downtown stores. The ODA, relying on the Broken Windows theory,

targeted graffiti as a sign of disorder that scares away consumers.

Legal graffiti walls were blamed for inviting illegal graffiti. ODA’s

solution was to get rid of the free walls all together.

In response, an opposing argument was made that graffiti is a

valuable cultural form of expression. This view was backed by the

Olympia Film Society, a non-profit volunteer-run organization representative of mostly

youth, artists and liberal community members with less direct investment in the

commercial viability of the downtown. Proponents of legal graffiti walls defined viability

55

not in terms of economics, but in having room for an unsanctioned form of expression.

ODA’s action jump-started public debates about freedom of expression and the right to

protect private property.

Nine out of the eleven articles regarding graffiti that appeared in 1999 were

published in The Daily Olympian between January and May. This concentration of

articles reflected the events that took place with respect to the graffiti walls. By the end of

April, a compromise between business owners and graffiti advocates was reached. Three

of the four shutdown walls remained closed and a wall on the side of the Olympia Film

Society’s Capitol Theater building was permanently reopened during the spring Arts

Walk of 1999. The resulting compromise temporarily calmed graffiti debates. 2002: Bad Behavior

The compromise of 1999 was followed by a lull in conversations about graffiti

until 2002 when a new surge of articles about graffiti appeared. While it was mentioned

in only two articles in the year 2000, eight articles brought up graffiti in the first five

months of 2002. This time graffiti lost center stage and became embedded in discussions

of a more general nature. Graffiti consistently appeared in articles discussing “anti-social

behavior.” Having been grouped with other behaviors, its expressive aspect became lost

in the debates. This trend correlates with the shift of the city “clean up” agenda from

eradication of graffiti to a wide-ranging eradication of various behaviors deemed

damaging to the vitality of downtown. In these articles, graffiti is mostly mentioned

within this broader context of problem behaviors such as aggressive panhandling, public

urination, car camping, homelessness and drug dealing. In 2001 all five articles refer to

graffiti as vandalism and in 2002 only one out of nine articles briefly mentions graffiti in

a positive manner, while the themes referencing graffiti switch to anti-social behavior and

vandalism. In The Daily Olympian, graffiti as communication is no longer part of

debates, but rather it is an accepted indicator of “anti-social behavior." The following is a

revealing excerpt from the Olympian’s editorial section titled “Our Views: Safety must

be restored.”

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…Cathie Butler, the communications manager for the city of Olympia, is afraid to go downtown. Last Christmas she set aside a day to do her holiday shopping…Twice on that day, she said, she was approached by aggressive panhandlers. She refused their demands for money. One spit in her face; the other spit at her feet. On a subsequent shopping trip to purchase furniture, she was chased for a full block by a panhandler demanding money. She bought her furniture online, instead. "I am so uncomfortable, that I no longer walk around downtown on my lunchtime… I do most of my shopping either on the Internet or out in Lacey closer to my home…and this from someone who in Illinois purposely lived in a very diverse urban pioneer, near-downtown neighborhood. I never felt unsafe there, but do here." Butler said too many people in downtown Olympia lack respect for others, and in the back of her mind she wonders how big a step it is from lack of respect for personal space to lack of respect for human life…Butler asks, "At what point does the collective lack of respect represented by spitting in the face…or urinating on a building, or damaging property with graffiti and etchings, translate into a knife in the back?" Good question -- and one the Olympia City Council must come to grips with. Maybe now that they are hearing these personal stories from people they work with and care about, council members will be moved to action. If you have a story to tell or a plea to make on downtown safety, contact the Olympia City Council. Let them know you expect solutions -- now! (The Daily Olympian, 4/7/02)

Butler associates physical threat

with graffiti writing. She draws a

connection between panhandling,

disrespecting property, writing graffiti,

and stabbing people in the back. Her

escape from the dangers of panhandlers

and graffiti writers is a flight from public

space to the virtual space of the Internet.

Butler’s attitude towards graffiti echoes the Broken Window’s thesis that graffiti is a sign

of more dangerous crimes. As stated by other sources in this research, the mass mediated

Figure 18. Vandalized flag mural

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Figure 19. May Day graffiti calls to "paint the town" in a “festival of resistance.”

framing of graffiti as an act of destruction can fuel the perception of danger. The Daily

Olympian demands solutions to downtown safety and prints articles stressing the

dangerous nature of graffiti:

Vandals mar garage-door flag mural…[with] what some say is a perplexing political verse (The Daily Olympian, 10/30/01). (Figure 18) Now, vandals have used the seawall, granite pathways and sandstone as their personal canvas for ugly scrawling of anti-war and anarchist messages (The Daily Olympian, 2/27/02).

Vandals spray-painted graffiti along the brick path and sea wall bordering Capitol Lake last weekend, the latest wave of vandalism…one slogan said “war tariffs” (The Daily Olympian, 2/28/02). Printing the spray painted message for all Olympian readers to enjoy only served to validate the taggers’ methods as an effective way to further his/her agenda…(The Daily Olympian, 3/23/02). A battle of rhetoric is brewing on city sidewalks. Rumor has it that people are planning on smashing the state and capitalism in this cozy little town on May 1st. (The Daily Olympian, 4/29/02).

In 2002, graffiti became part of a new discussion. As expressed in interviews with

ODA members Connie Lorenz, Steve Cooper and Alan McWain, there was fading faith

in legal walls abating illegal graffiti. At the same time, as Dick Machlan suggested in his

interview, political graffiti was increasing along with the intensity of politics in 2002.

Perhaps as the US began its war against terrorism in response to September 11, criticism

of the US government became unpatriotic, civil liberties and free speech were being

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tested and anonymous political graffiti appeared as an outlet for unpopular public

commentary. As a result, the media discounted the illegal writing coupled with marginal

views as merely an act of vandalism.

In addition, the focus of revitalization turned from graffiti to the perpetrators of

broader anti-social behavior. In June 2002, the deliberation about appropriate uses of

public space continued, as the City Council rejected an overbroad car camping ordinance

drawn up by the City Attorney at the Council’s request:

Hyer said, "The law doesn't protect those legitimate uses of our public spaces downtown, and it seems to target anyone sleeping anywhere in the city with a blanket, umbrella or tent." Lisa Hayes from the Cold & Hungry Coalition is equally critical. "This is a textbook definition of the criminalization of homelessness," she said (The Daily Olympian, 6/25/02).

The car camping ordinance draft called for a $1,000 fine or 90 days in jail for sleeping on any public property. This was seen, by some, as a veiled attempt to run the undesirables out of town or put them in jail in order to secure downtown vitality. Once again, the downtown’s vitality was defined as it’s attractiveness to shoppers. The Daily Olympian covered this new agenda in articles about the Community Conversation that took place in February 2002. The Community Conversation was organized and used by city officials to engage the public in the discussions of downtown revitalization. This Conversation further altered the framework for talking about and managing graffiti. Following the trend of The Daily Olympian’s articles, graffiti lost its link with expression and became grouped with other antisocial behavior seen as threatening to the public.

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Chapter Six: Findings - Community Conversation

In 2001, the City Council began exploring the impact of “anti-social behaviors”

on the downtown’s safety and economy. The study began with two sessions attended by

some of the downtown organizations, which included the Olympia Downtown

Association, Behavioral Health Resources, Community Youth Services, The Olympia

Police Department, and Municipal Court Judge. These sessions defined a number of

behaviors as anti-social, one of which was graffiti.4 Having recognized these anti-social

behaviors as a problem, the City Council then convened a public forum, which took place

on February 28, 2002.

Setting the agenda for the conversation, the City Council mirrored the articles in

The Daily Olympian, and perhaps because one fueled the other, graffiti was classified as a

type of anti-social behavior. Among other behaviors defined by the Council as anti-social

(e.g. aggressive panhandling, urinating/defecating in public, interfering with pedestrians,

lewd conduct, drinking in public, trespassing, and disturbing the peace), graffiti was

included as vandalism. The forum, known as the Community Conversation, focused on

managing these behaviors in an effort to revitalize downtown. While it did not focus on

graffiti exclusively, the forum’s participants talked about graffiti in connection with other

disorderly activities that are seen as threatening to the downtown.

The notes of this Community Conversation were obtained from the official city of

Olympia website where an extensive record of the City Council study sessions, meetings

and the Community Conversation were published for public access

(http://www.ci.olympia.wa.us/council/PublicSafety/).5 This chapter will discuss the notes

which were taken by participants during the Community Conversation, and later

published on this official city of Olympia website. The notes of the Conversation are

important because they are a written record of a public discussion and because the City

4 Although an in-depth analysis of the entire site would be beneficial, constraints of this thesis require this to be left for another study. 5 It should be noted that while the notes of the public forum were posted on this site, this is an official city website and does not serve as a public forum itself. The content of this site is controlled by the city of Olympia.

60

Council continued to draw on this collection of data in subsequent deliberations about

policies, strategies, goals and plans aimed at downtown safety issues.

Once the Council members focused on the topic of anti-social behaviors and

downtown safety, the community was invited to participate in the Community

Conversation. Emails and phone calls to local organizations, flyers, advertisements in The

Daily Olympian, community radio, and word of mouth were used to reach anyone

interested in the Community Conversation on Public Safety. Because of these outreach

efforts, a cross-section of the Olympia community attended the forum. On the evening of

February 28, the meeting took place in a local high school, on the edge of town, and was

attended by over three hundred people. Once gathered, the participants divided into

twenty-two discussion groups of fifteen people each. Each discussion group elected a

note taker and was given the same three questions, set by the City Council, listed below.

During the discussion, the note taker wrote down the comments generated in their group

of fifteen participants, addressing each question at a time. The notes were collected at the

end of the evening and taken for further study by the City Council as well as published on

the website (Appendix C). Below are the problem statement and questions presented for

discussion at the Community Conversation session as published on The Official City of

Olympia Web Site (http://www.ci.olympia.wa.us/council/PublicSafety/).

Problem Statement. Shop owners, downtown users, visitors, police and others in the community note a high level of offensive and illegal behavior in downtown Olympia. This behavior threatens Olympia’s vision of a safe and vibrant downtown. Questions. 1. Why is this behavior occurring in downtown Olympia? 2. What needs to be done to correct the situation? 3. Who needs to be part of the solution, and what roles should they play?

The published transcriptions of the community response to the above questions have been

divided into several common themes. In the following discussion, the bulleted segments

represent direct quotes from the conversation notes as they appear on the website.

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Behavior Encouraged Too Friendly a Place

• Olympia perhaps is too kind and tolerant

One of the major themes that came up in Community Conversation notes was that

undesirable behavior was encouraged in the downtown area. Statements criticizing

Olympia for being “homeless-friendly” were common. This opinion was recorded several

times in most of the discussion groups. Friendliness manifested through service agencies,

like the Salvation Army and a soup kitchen, was thought to attract undesirable people,

who in turn were seen to exhibit undesirable behaviors. The availability of free food and

shelter concentrated in the city center were believed to attract the perpetrators of bad

behaviors,

• It [anti-social behavior] is tolerated. Services are provided for these people (on the streets) and it gives them a crutch

This “friendly” atmosphere was perceived to attract other needy people from less

“friendly” and more suburban cities.

The geographic position of Olympia was also seen as an attractive location. Being on

the corridor of a major Northwest freeway gives vagabonds easy access to the services of

Olympia. Finally, the liberal mentality of a college town was counted as a factor in

encouraging bad behavior. The politically active, liberal Evergreen State College was

noted as a source of homeless advocates and social rights activists. The homeless and

graffiti once again became part of the same conversation in the concerns of safety and

services perceived to be responsible for the misbehaviors.

Weak Policing

Along the lines of being too “friendly,” inadequate policing was also seen as a

major cause for bad behavior.

• Resources to underprivileged also attract willfully delinquent, need stronger ordinances and enforcement

There was a split between two views regarding police efficacy: weak laws and

weak enforcement of laws. One opinion was that the laws that exist are not strong enough

62

to discourage bad behavior; the other opinion was that the laws that exist are not enforced

consistently and forcefully. A belief that the Olympia laws are too weak was repeated

throughout the notes. As the following excerpt from the notes demonstrates, The First

Amendment was also blamed for impeding appropriate police action:

• Police tolerate behavior downtown that they would not tolerate in other areas of the City, let’s get real, if a bunch of kids were sitting on a sidewalk in South Capital asking for change, they would be moved along by the Police, but in downtown, we are told that people have a constitutional right to sit on a City-owned sidewalk and ask for change…

In addition, limited police resources such as inadequate jail space were seen as another

restrictive factor in adequate enforcement.

On the other hand, comments such as the one below argued that enforcement

actions against marginal groups ignored the inebriated middle class coming home after

bar time.

• Police monitoring homeless rather than the bar crowd

Repeatedly, police were accused of being biased in enforcing the law. It was argued that

there was inadequate law enforcement with respect to the average citizen and that too

much focus was placed on the underprivileged. This recurring theme boiled down to an

expressed need for a more effective police control in the downtown area. Costs and Benefits

As in the previous chapters, the value and

damage of graffiti were debated. Comments

defending the so-called “anti-social

behavior” pointed out that graffiti was not

necessarily “anti-social” or detrimental to the

vitality of the city. At the same time graffiti

was identified as a sign of disorder signaling

economic decay. As the notes of the Community Conversation reflect, expression and

vandalism were once again central themes in public deliberation about graffiti.

Figure 20. Illegal graffiti

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Expression

The downtown was discussed in terms of being a venue for expression.

Downtown was recognized as a public sphere where interactions occur, where people

come to see and be seen and where public communication takes place. Graffiti was

mentioned as a perceived alternative to having a voice in the public sphere,

• Graffiti happens because people feel that they don’t have a voice

Several arguments were made that not all graffiti is damaging or should be considered

vandalism. Opinion was expressed that downtown is a place for discourse and that graffiti

is not necessarily a bad behavior, but also a way for marginal groups to participate. Some

Conversation participants questioned the premise for grouping graffiti with other

behavior problems,

• Why is graffiti a safety issue?

At the same time, however, the notes show that to many people, graffiti remains a sign of

danger.

Vandalism

Equally pervasive, the arguments against graffiti came up

in the Community Conversation. Similar to the arguments

in the above chapters, graffiti was once again brought up

as a sign of danger, damaging to the town’s economy.

Tagging was isolated as the pernicious type of graffiti and distinguished from the graffiti

recognized as art,

• Tagging creates a violent, hostile environment but is separate from graffiti art

The cost of clean up as well as the cost of losing downtown clientele were given as a

reason to eradicate graffiti. As in the previous debates, the notes reflected a conflict

between graffiti as an act of social participation in the public sphere and an act of

intimidation that prevents others from participation in the public sphere.

Figure 21. Alley graffiti

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Culprits The dominant theme of the Community Conversation implicated same groups of

people in graffiti crimes, as did most proponents of graffiti eradication in the previous

chapters. The homeless and youths were most often mentioned in the discussions. Some

participants, though, defended the homeless against unfair accusations.

Homeless Blamed Unfairly

Many of the comments indicated that participants believed bad behavior was

blamed unfairly on the homeless. Disapproving notes criticized unfair assumptions made

as to whom is to blame for the undesirable activities. Arguments were made that

increased control aimed at the homeless would not solve the problems, and that it

unjustly deprived the less privileged of their freedoms.

• Police are being allowed or ordered to harass homeless, poor citizens.

Another related criticism was that the entire framing of the Community Conversation set

up the homeless as the target problem.

• Discussion is targeting a population (homeless) and this has been framed in

the organization of this event – much discussion on this point.

Part of the criticism of the Community Conversation framing was that class-based

assumptions about the poor and the homeless were made. Several notes said that the

middle class suburbanites were also causing problems downtown.

• There is a separation of the classes. Some come into town on weekends and drink, etc.

City Council was accused of targeting the homeless with the civility ordinances, while

ignoring that these behaviors come from others groups as well:

• We all agree these problems caused by a number of groups – why is Council targeting homeless with these ordinances?

While quite a bit of advocacy for the homeless occurred in the Conversation, there were

no recorded comments defending youth. Youth carried much of the responsibility for bad

behavior,

• My employees think that the negative behaviors are coming from teens and not the homeless (6:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m.)

65

Many comments identified the homeless and youth as outsiders committing unsanctioned

acts. The following note refers to the question of where the anti-social behaviors are

coming from,

• Transient youth groups from other communities; buildings getting tagged recently

In addition to targeting problem people, participants also identified bad places that

encourage problem behaviors. Downtown architecture and planning was held accountable

for enabling the behaviors. Lack of lighting, dark alleys and the existence of numerous

local bars were mentioned as problem-causing factors.

• Downtown is made up of bars.

The dark public spaces and alleys lack the protection of surveillance, creating attractive

alcove for unsanctioned behaviors in the cover of darkness. The abundance of

downtowns bars produces an abundance of drunks misbehaving on public streets.

Social Problems

In addition to the concrete identification of local people, places and

establishments, participants also discussed larger social problems. Primarily, participants

defined substance abuse, lack of activities for youth, lack of resources and an ailing

economy as the bigger cause behind the problems of the downtown. Drug abuse and

rebellion were seen as a bad combination:

• High incidents of alcohol and drug abuse mixed with those who rebel against society.

The local political agenda, which successfully cut taxes and diminished the funding for

social services, was criticized:

• As we continue to cut services, and support initiatives such as Tim Eyman’s the problems are going to get worse.

Broad statements were made acknowledging that bigger social problems exist and are not

being addressed through increased police control and myopic approach:

• Olympia is a reflection of greater crisis (which will worsen without a spiritual solution presented by the community).

66

Discussants also placed responsibility on the media for promoting certain behaviors:

• Media condones these behaviors through movies, music etc.

Attitudes Much like the themes covered in the previous chapters, problems of perception

and safety were discussed in the Community Conversation. The following notes represent

some of the comments about perception:

• Lack of communication creating hostility and negative perceptions • The issue isn’t safety, it’s a matter of comfort/discomfort • Perception of a safety problem • The stories we choose to tell create myths and perceptions. I question that

question. I could tell just as many wholesome positive stories.

Participants also questioned the assumptions made by the City Council in framing the

discussion in terms of existing problem behaviors and the definition of these behaviors:

• Who is complaining about these ‘people’ and/or ‘problems’? • “Behavior” is too vague • The question is a gross over-generalization of the behavior problem • If we take the question “as given” I’d come away from the conversation

dissatisfied In a study session before the Community Conversation, the Council discussed some

solutions. In this early exchange, suggested solutions mostly involved the creation of

stricter ordinances, enhancement of existing ordinances and an adoption of a stricter

policy toward eradicating behaviors considered problematic. During these sessions prior

to the Community Conversation, a concern that the solutions unfairly targeted the

homeless was expressed by some of the participating groups.

On May 26, following the Community Conversation, a City Council Study

Session report discussed the Community Conversation. This follow-up report stated that,

generally, the groups were able to list the anti-social behaviors, and that the areas of

disagreement between groups tended to be around whether or not anti-social behavior

causes people to feel unsafe downtown. Disagreement was also reported about whether

these perceptions of personal safety actually affect the downtown economy. It was further

noted that not everyone agreed with the problem statement identified by the City Council.

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A general observation was made in the report that City Council’s original context of

economic health of the downtown seemed to slip from the deliberation of the Community

Conversation. It appeared from the conversation that in addition to economy, key issues

of the vitality of downtown were inseparable from issues of civil liberties and social

justice.

In further study sessions following Community Conversation, the City Council

made an effort to acknowledge the importance of addressing “problematic behavior” and

not the “condition of homelessness,” but the focus of the City Council still remains on

eradicating what has been defined as “problematic behavior.” On July 9, published notes

of the City Council stated that the goal of these studies and further strategies has been to

“foster a safe environment in downtown Olympia that is respectful of the community’s

diverse citizenry” (http://www.ci.olympia.wa.us/council/PublicSafety/). However, the

majority of the strategies target eradication of behaviors through increased community

and official policing. A number of restrictive ordinances were proposed, as was increased

surveillance, emphasis on patrols and funding for jail enhancements. Although the City

Council discussions that followed the Community Conversation acknowledge the

concerns of misperceptions, the grip of the Broken Windows theory continued to

influence planning. The proposed methods of creating “a safe environment” mainly

prioritize targeting the signs of disorder, or anti-social behaviors for eradication, through

increased social control.

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Chapter Seven: Discussion

In speaking about public space, an assumption must not be made that all citizens

desire freedom above all else. It might be the case that the pursuit of freedom in modern

times is an intellectual activity, and what Americans desire above freedom is security.

One might argue that the two are inseparable, but in the context of discourse they are

distinct. When dissent and subaltern publics are commonly framed as threatening,

increased control becomes justifiable and desirable in the face of fear (Small, 1994).

While graffiti is blamed for perceptions of danger, there is a larger social problem that

needs to be addressed. The effects of media and a diminishing public space (Gumpert and

Drucker, 1998) play an important role in forming perceptions of safety and the need for

control. The results of this research show that the Broken Windows theory is a common

paradigm in discussions about the governance of public space. Graffiti, seen as a sign of

disorder, is said to invite more serious crime and scare citizens away from the streets. A

strong opinion prevails that fear of downtown damages the local economy. At the same

time, all involved agree that the problem is largely due to perceptions of threat, not a

threat itself. Most sources in this research reported not feeling threatened themselves, but

claimed that others were fearful. The most commonly proposed solution, however, was

not to eradicate the false perception, but to limit public behavior. This research proposes

that this is due to shortsighted approaches of the Broken Windows theory. The results of

this study show that the public discourse about graffiti and management of public space is

much more complex and varied than the Broken Windows rhetoric allows.

One of the major causes of undesirable public behavior was attributed to lack of

control due to inefficient force. Abating the fears of others by removing the visual signs

of risk, such as graffiti, was one recommendation even at the price of restricting liberties.

Two problems present themselves in this approach. One is that increased control can

perpetuate fear by creating suitable, but not necessarily real, enemies. The second

problem is that while focusing on signs of disorder offers a tangible solution to local

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problems, it can lead to a superficial policing technique that ignores larger social issues

more difficult to tackle.

The main two theories relevant to the governance of public space in

Olympia are Broken Windows and the third-person effect. Although the complexities of

managing downtown have been acknowledged, the majority of practical solutions come

from the policing efforts focused on criminalization and expulsion. At the same time, the

third-person effect provides a justification for the Broken Windows approach. Advocates

of increased social control believe that others in the community are threatened by

disorder, and therefore increased control is needed. Both of these theories illustrate that

increased desire for social control is manifested when the world is perceived as a

dangerous place. Social construction of fear must be addressed in further studies on

communication and public space and acknowledged as a problem in policy making. The

discussion below reflects on the findings of the previous chapters and suggests a way to

get beyond the paradigm of Broken Windows.

Inclusion It is necessary to challenge the assumptions resulting from the Broken Windows

approach to city planning and social control. Studies have shown that while graffiti may

symbolize a lack of social control, it does not necessarily correlate with crime. Instead,

the presence of graffiti may be an indication of a disconnected community rather than a

criminal one (Raudenbush and Sampson, 1999; Ross and Jang, 2000; Taylor 2001). In the

data presented above, the homeless and youth were commonly perceived to be outsiders

acting against the community. Behaviors defined as “anti-social” were mostly blamed on

these groups, which were held responsible for posing a threat to the economic vitality of

the downtown. Defensive actions against these marginalized groups were proclaimed as

necessary. Interestingly, the blame for economic instability was placed on those most

likely to be outside of the economic exchange.

Like the homeless, kids on Olympia streets are more likely to represent a non-

consumer culture. Appropriating the modern architecture, teenagers painting on buildings

and skateboarding on concrete sidewalks pose a threat to the notion of what is normal in a

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consumer-centered environment. In a culture where value lies in that which is worth

money, turning something into a commodity is a legitimizing act. Good citizens watch

television and become good shoppers. Non-consuming youth and the homeless represent

a transgression in the commercialized public spaces. They become a sign of disorder,

posing a threat to the status quo.

During a public forum about safety in public space, The Olympia City Council

framed the Community Conversation in terms of anti-social behaviors being a threat to

the downtown economy. Many participants in the Conversation objected to such framing

of the discussion. Criticism was made that blaming the underprivileged and youth as the

perpetrators unfairly sets them up as outsiders intending to hurt the community. This does

not mean that the Council deliberately blamed the homeless and youth for the ills of the

downtown, but it shows the prevalence of this paradigm and the common assumptions

that need to be challenged in deliberation about governance of public space.

Social Services It is necessary to lower the barrier of social exclusion in city planning

(Friedmann, 2002). Friedmann suggests that social programs targeting only the basic

needs, such as soup kitchens or shelters, are likely to be resisted because they reflect the

redistribution of wealth paradigm of haves and have-nots. Such resistance was observed

in the results of this study. Arguments blaming social services and the homeless

“friendly” atmosphere of Olympia are an example of resistance to social policies that are

perceived to be too superficial. The basis for full political participation in civic life,

according to Friedmann, must come not out of charity, but out of a concept of local

citizenship “that involves human flourishing as the highest good” (pg47). Larger regional

economic changes need to be made in order to lower social exclusion and benefit the

population as a whole.

This study shows frequent associations between the homeless and graffiti writing.

This illuminates awareness and a conflict in addressing the issues of basic needs. During

an interview, property owner Steve Cooper explained graffiti writers’ antagonism

towards himself as a rift between the wealthy and the poor. He saw the political writing

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as a rebellion against capitalist hegemony, not only in words but also in action through

irreverence toward private property. Cooper is knowledgeable and proactive about the

management of graffiti on his property. One of his strategies in combating illegal writing

on his buildings was to become “the good guy.” Since he believed that his buildings were

hit more often than others because he held the reputation of “the greedy capitalist,”

Cooper made efforts to change his image. He got involved in a dialogue with the Cold

and Hungry coalition aimed at protecting the rights of the homeless in Olympia.

Blaming social services, and at the same time targeting signs of disorder for

eradication is an ironic example of shortsighted solutions proposed by the Broken

Windows. Hiding the problem rather than dealing with it exposes a superficial strategy

that undermines a community, perpetuating the creation of outsiders and fear. As the

results of the study repeatedly illustrate, this approach defines the less privileged as non-

members and puts forth a message that social justice only applies to those who can afford

it. In turn, Cooper’s involvement with the Cold and Hungry Coalition illustrates a

positive response to “signs of disorder.” In part reacting to graffiti, Cooper, a major

downtown property owner, became engaged in a dialogue with the homeless. In this case

graffiti illustrates an effective method of participation in the public sphere, producing

beneficial results for the community.

Proposed Methods of Governance As Olympia struggles with ways to govern public space, eradication and legal

programs are considered as methods of controlling graffiti writing. A variety of attempted

and possible solutions are discussed. Some back the “zero-tolerance policy,” while others

see solutions go beyond graffiti eradication. Tagger One and graffiti eradication

proponent McWain agree that in a perfect world, graffiti would not exist:

In an ideal world graffiti would not exist. Art would just happen. Someone could just put a moustache on the Mona Lisa (One, interviewed 2002). In my perfect vision there would be no graffiti at all ---people would respect private property… I have no tolerance at all; I would like to see it all eradicated (McWain).

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Eradication

In Olympia, eradication was the most concrete and frequently voiced approach to

managing graffiti. Some eradication proposals targeted illegal graffiti only, while others

went after all graffiti, including the legal types. Backed by the arguments of the Broken

Windows theory that the presence of graffiti encourages more serious crime, eradication

offers a clear solution. The swift removal of graffiti is aimed at discouraging writers by

not allowing for any exposure (Harcourt, 2001). This technique removes the motivation

for writing graffiti – visibility in public space.

Olympia has employed various methods for achieving this goal. The Olympia

Police Department uses a team of youth interested in police work, known as Explorers,

who are sent out on routine missions to paint out graffiti; a police phone number has been

given out soliciting public reports of graffiti writing; the Olympia Downtown Association

funded by the city and the business community has hired a person to paint out graffiti on

a regular basis; individual business owners regularly paint out graffiti on their own

buildings; and lastly, a mobilization of locals has been employed to clean up graffiti for

Arts Walk.

While critical of misplaced policing efforts born out of Broken Windows, scholars

agree that informal collective efforts among residents may provide unforeseen benefits in

creating a safe community (Skogan and Hartnett 1998; Ross and Jang, 2000). Mobilizing

a neighborhood "clean up" to reduce physical disorder, such as the one organized before

Arts Walk in Olympia, for example, can build collective strength and sense of agency

through the formation of social bonds and by increasing local awareness of the mutual

commitment of residents to the downtown. Such community action might also

demonstrate to citizens that people in the neighborhood could be relied upon to maintain

public order and social control without the need for police intervention (Raudenbush and

Sampson, 1999; Ross and Jang, 2000; Harcourt, 2001; Taylor, 2001).

In fact, the Olympia Police chief attempted to "set the record straight" publicly, in

an article to The Daily Olympian, announcing that stronger police enforcement towards

graffiti is a superficial solution. Instead, the chief of police called for a community-based

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approach. The ultimate solution to graffiti problems, he wrote, has to do with “how

successful we become, as a community, at instilling a sense of self-worth and ownership

pride in the community in the young people who might be disposed to engage in graffiti

vandalism” (The Daily Olympian, 4/17/ 2000). Self-policing, instead of reliance on police

for social control, can have positive effects on the community in creating social networks.

Citizens can feel that they themselves have control of their surroundings instead of

relying on agents of authority and commercial enterprises to provide security.

Legal Graffiti Walls

Accepting that it is necessary to make ample room for free discourse in public

space may increase the sense of ownership and self-worth, described by the chief of

police. Many young graffiti writers feel that graffiti is an important form of expression

and legal graffiti walls are part of a solution to abating illegal writing. Olympia activist

Pat Tassoni’s suggestion of a legal public billboard is similar to other ideas of creating

outlets for behaviors instead of suppressing them:

If there is a problem, the solution might be to get rid of it or it might be to create an outlet. Like you can give citations for urinating in public or you can build public toilets (L. Levine, interviewed 2002). A fear exists that promoting legal space for graffiti might encourage writing

elsewhere by legitimizing the activity. However, it is safe to say that neither eradication

nor legalization will prevent illegal graffiti writing completely because part of graffiti

culture relies on the fact that it is an outlaw activity. In addition to providing space for

those willing to follow rules, the walls attract taggers and others who are unwilling or

unaware of self-policing agreements. Graffiti therefore spills over beyond the designated

boundaries. Like litter on sidewalks, absolute control of legal walls is an impossible task,

but unlike writing on walls, banning smoking has not (yet) been considered to combat the

litter of cigarette butts. Like any other human activity, some, but not all, graffiti writers

are able to “self-police” their action. Arts commissioner Linda Oestrike commented that

graffiti can just be annoying, like many other behaviors in public space, such as people

with bad ties or pungent perfume.

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Although most of those involved in the administration of public space admitted

that legal walls are a good idea, they were pessimistic about the viability of legal walls

because they saw the burden of the maintenance placed on the business owners. Some

perceived this as a lack of respect and unwillingness to cooperate on the part of the

writers. Most recognized that one person’s violation of the boundaries can ruin the self-

policing efforts of others. Despite the intentions of the writers, graffiti spillover beyond

the designated boundaries costs business owners time and paint to clean up.

Some business and building owners like Ray LaForge and Judy Mendoza did

support legal graffiti spaces despite the cost of spillover, but they shut their free walls

down due to pressure from the Olympia Downtown Association. While private buildings

have struggled with the management of legal graffiti walls, public city walls have also

been off limits. According to arts commissioner Oestrike, legal walls on city-owned

property are too bureaucratically complicated to allow. The politics of liability and

funding are two big issues that prevent the city from getting involved with unsanctioned

writing. The city administrators shy away from anything potentially offensive or political

fearing a deluge of complaints from tax-paying citizens.

Brewer (1992) argues for legal programs as a solution to graffiti’s prevalence. But

while this is a worthy outlet, Cooper’s cynicism is understood. One of the major

attractions of graffiti writing is the all-American romantic notion of the outlaw culture.

Legal outlets can be provided, and doubtless will satisfy many writers, but those attracted

to the danger and the game with the law will not be deterred with legal programs. In the

same vein, however, a complete crack down on graffiti does not address this attraction to

the outlaw lifestyle; after all, increased control only creates more ways to be an outlaw

(Ferrell, 1996).

As a major owner of downtown property and therefore motivated in protecting his

interests, Cooper experiments with other approaches in dealing with graffiti. Expressing

his frustration with the lack of accountability of the writers, he talks about the vague

definition of the writers as a controllable group. Struggling with the notion of “they “

and having no clear faction to confront for negotiation, Cooper sees control as difficult if

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not impossible. In conversation it comes out that because of this lack of a united

organization of graffiti writers, several approaches are necessary.

Commercialization aimed at piece writers is another technique proposed by

Cooper as a supplement to eradication and community involvement. Cooper describes an

idea of creating graffiti pieces that would be painted at the writer’s leisure and then sold

monthly at an auction held in the New Caledonia, the downtown arcade owned by

Cooper. “We are trying to corrupt them by making them into little capitalists,” he says

laughing, “so they can see that there might be value to their art

beyond expression."

Appropriation and commercialization of graffiti might

give graffiti writers a benign reason for writing. It can create a

dependence of writers on potential consumers, rather than

perpetuating an outsider status, an anti-consumer

counterculture or resistance. Making graffiti (or as I call it,

proffiti) popular and normal might lure some outlaws away

from participating in the culture of dodging the law and

defacing property. In fact, graffiti design has been

commercialized in fashion clothing, sports and the music

industry. Many writers have gone on to become designers for

skateboard companies and other youth fashion. Nike has used graffiti in advertising its

running shoes. During the summer of 2002, Victoria’s Secret bathing suits, bags, sandals

and jean jackets all sport a new kind of tag. The tag that is so vociferously touted as a

sign of disorder and most likely not tolerated on the outside wall of the Victoria’s Secret

headquarters appears all over the 2002 summer fashion items for middle-class women. A

couple of years earlier, a Hollywood promotional advertising agency hired graffiti writers

in several US cities to illegally paste posters printed to simulate handmade silk screens

advertising a Hollywood movie (Man on the Moon) about Andy Kaufman, an irreverent

prankster. However, like eradication, commercialization does not seem to hinder the

unpaid and unsolicited writing. Despite being paid for his artwork through commissioned

Figure 22. Tags on Victoria's Secret clothes

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murals, graffiti writer XY insisted that commissions are just work and real graffiti writing

is free, unsolicited and for the most part outside of the law.

Surveillance was another technique considered in the discussions of Olympia

public space governance. According to Cooper, cameras have been used successfully in

other cities to eradicate graffiti. Citizen-monitored web cameras that transmit images of

alleys onto the web allow concerned citizens to log in at their leisure and watch for

graffiti writers during their spare time. A phone number on the website, then, allows

citizens to report violations observed through the web. In our conversation, Cooper

admitted the “Big Brother” aspect of such a system, but nevertheless seemed to have

hope for the idea. Other, less drastic surveillance strategies were also considered by the

ODA as well as the City Council subsequent to the Community Conversation.

Architectural planning such as increased lighting and other preventative design could

provide for a better citizen surveillance system. Crimes would be less likely to occur

because of a city design focused on public space that is more open, more heavily used

and easily monitored, reducing anonymity.

As findings show, many people perceive graffiti as a threat because it relies on

accountability from anonymous actors. What keeps people from yelling out obscenities

on the street is self-restraint due to face-to-face interaction and the possible repercussions

of such action. When accountability is diminished, the individual actor becomes more

threatening. Road rage, for example, illustrates the potential of behavior when face-to-

face accountability is replaced with the anonymity of being in a car. The anonymity of

being a faceless member of a crowd has been associated with the breakdown of

traditional values and norms. In social science, this idea is one of the most widely cited

effects of social groups (Reicher, 1996). It is defined as deindividuation, a psychological

state of decreased self-evaluation, causing antinormative and disinhibited behavior

(Zimbardo, 1969). It is logical, for this reason, that graffiti is perceived as threatening.

Most Olympia graffiti writers are shadowy, writing in secret to avoid the law; they pose a

threat to those who fear them by the sheer mystery of their existence. When the writers

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Figure 23. Sign posted by owner of the memorial wall

are invisible, less trust exists between the public and the writers because the interaction

required for building social bonds and inhibition is removed (Putnam, 1995).

Cooperation At the same time a willingness and ability of the Olympia community to

cooperate was observed during the course of this study. Machlan noted that graffiti

increases during times of political stress. This can indicate that graffiti is an important

communication devise to deal with tragedy (Klingman and Shalev, 2000). In fact

evidence suggests that that during increased stress in the community, transgression is

more likely to occur and more effective self-policing results. This might be because a

tragedy pulls the community closer together and strengthens the social bonds between

members. During the course of this study a tragedy occurred in Olympia. A graffiti writer

named Nick was hit by a car, while riding a bicycle, and died. Writers expressed their

loss by creating a memorial wall on the previously shut down walls of the buildings

owned by Judy Mendoza and Ray LaForge. The

memorial was put up despite ODA’s objections;

the owners of the buildings asserted themselves in

allowing the graffiti to remain. Judy’s husband

(also owner of the building), Gene Otto, posted a

sign (figure 25) on the wall of his building

addressing the ODA or whoever might be tempted

to paint over the graffiti with cover-up paint. The

sign claimed responsibility for the wall and gave

Gene’s phone number for further communication

if necessary. Ray LaForge, the owner of the

building across the alley, housing Kanako’s business, defended the new graffiti to the

ODA, despite the fact that it was put up without his notice. Although previously

unwilling to challenge the ODA, both owners asserted themselves in response to a

tragedy. According to LaForge, although ODA did not approve, they also did not strongly

contest the new graffiti. As of writing this thesis, the memorial remains in the alley, and

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has been untouched by other writers or the ODA. Coincidently, the currently open free

graffiti wall on the back of the Capitol Theater also began as a memorial wall when a

writer was electrocuted while writing too close to the high power wires. There seems to

be a somber public acceptance of these walls as media for expression of grief. In addition

to a memorial, expressions related to war, September eleven, and general uncertainty and

political insecurity has been expressed on these walls. This shows successful community

policing and the underlying ability to cooperate; a separate study of this event could

contribute to understanding public communication.

Figure 24. Segment of a memorial wall to Nick

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Chapter Eight: Conclusion In a retaliatory appropriation, the Target ad depicted at the beginning of this thesis

(figure 1) has itself been targeted. The bleeding finger (figure 24) is someone’s paint gun

modification to the original design. The Target image has been shot by paintballs creating

blood-like red drippings coming down the canvas from the hands and the torso. Is this an

attack on the ad, a

conversation about the ad,

or just vandalism? One

could argue that this is

indiscriminate vandalism

and that acts like these are

random. The argument

would follow that such acts

unjustly damage private

property and waste money

and resources. On the other

hand (excuse the pun), it can also be a public communication between consumer culture

and the individual/outlaw/critic who finds an outlet for mass expression of animosity

towards the mass culture of advertising. Some will argue that this is not an effective

commentary. Others might disagree, saying that it is a political act of claiming space and

visibility, a postmodern idea of “territorialization,” or the conscious making of space.

Through such action normative environments are contested and reconstructed, spaces are

“desanctified,” in other words boundaries of the “sacred” become redefined. When place

making is a point of control, citizens can gain power of representation in such re-

definition of space (Foucault, 1986).

That which we learn to be untouchable is transformed by a splatter of red paint,

instantly changing the meaning of the image and the environment of the street.

Regardless of the perspective, a mass conversation through action and symbolism in a

Figure 25. Target ad shot with red paint

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public space has taken place. Durkheim (1915) wrote that symbolic representation that

reflects and expresses society can strengthen the collective conscience. In a way this can

be seen as a modern alternative to a public debate where face-to-face conversation is

scarce and public communication occurs on a mass scale in an anonymous fashion. It can

also be argued that such moments bring vitality and a sign of life to an otherwise

impersonal environment.

The findings here are not an argument for legalizing all forms of graffiti in all

public places. Rather this research challenges the simplistic approach of the Broken

Windows, pointing out that in fact the discourse about graffiti and public places is

complex. Although taken for granted as common sense, “anti-social behaviors” and

“outsiders” are social constructions that were questioned by many Olympia community

members. We need to interrogate assumptions that are perpetuated by the superficial

solutions of the Broken Windows theory, which contribute to the creation of “outsiders.”

A legitimation of a variety of expressive means may reduce the sense of alienation

expressed by citizens who fear public space and each other. Public space is a place where

either inclusion or marginalization can be fostered. By criminalizing certain forms of

communication, such as graffiti, while at the same time filling visual space with

advertising, the law creates outlaws who are more likely to act out against authority

because they feel excluded from participation.

In Brewer’s 1992 study, graffiti writers themselves recommended legal graffiti

walls as a primary solution to illegal writing. This is not to say that legal walls would

eliminate illegal graffiti, but they would expose citizens to one another, in this way easing

anxiety. The underlying argument is that increased police control is not the only and not

the best option of governance. Increased policing does not address the issues of alienation

and only increases the gap between those who are being controlled. On the other hand,

improved mechanisms of self-governance will encourage social responsibility and

accountability.

As Cooper put it when talking about highly controlled public spaces,

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“what people like is the same thing that you get at Disneyland. When you walk through

the gates you feel like nobody is gating you in, they are gating the bad guys out.”

However, gating out “the bad guys” continues to push disadvantaged groups to the

margins and can create solidarity among these marginal groups romanticizing rebellion

and further validating the outlaw culture (Ferrell, 1997). Creating “the other” only

reinforces the graffiti culture as an outlaw culture (Brewer, 1992). In areas such as New

York, where zero-tolerance strategies have been implemented to combat graffiti, the

writers’ identities have become strongly aligned with the “outlaw” image. The New York

writers are less likely to participate in legal programs, possibly due to the “outsider”

image entrenched by the strong anti-graffiti efforts. By contrast, as Brewer suggests, on

the West Coast, where graffiti wars have been milder, the writers tend to favor strategies

of self-governance and exhibiting a willingness to work within the communities. In

Brewer’s study, California writers were much more likely to be in favor of legal

programs. In fact, in Brewer’s evaluations of strategies to control illegal graffiti, the

primary recommendation from the West Coast writers themselves was that of creating

legal graffiti walls (Brewer and Miller, 1990; Brewer, 1992).

A different paradigm needs to be applied to the discourse on vital civic life.

Inclusive strategies need to be considered in governing the streets. By looking at all

behaviors as a participation in the public sphere, solutions can result that accommodate

all citizens, not only those who hold economic power.

While Disney keeps “the bad guys out,” how long will it be before Disney creates

the graffiti alley in its simulacra of that all-American city? Will we nostalgically try to

recapture the endangered image of the freedom-loving outlaw in the safety of simulation?

Will the romantic version of an American spirit in search of a new frontier beyond the

boundaries of convention safely remain in our lore? Will there be simulations of “faux

graffiti” on the exterior walls of buildings in search of “authenticity” so hungrily sought

after in our mass-produced culture?

When the space of communication such as television programming, malls and

streets are dominated by fear, do we as a civil society pay a price? Do we risk losing

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something that we will only try to recreate when it is gone? A vital public space is

important to a civil society in that it can provide an opportunity to create a normative

image of individuals. Theories of social control and deviance are tied to the acts of social

interaction in constructing the self and the notions of “other” (Foucault, 1977; Cohen,

1985). But in many public spaces communication is limited to communication of control

or promotion of goods. Throughout the day one is told when to stop, when to go, where

not to walk, how long to stay, what problem to have and how to fix it. Observing

approaches to managing graffiti forces us to consider the limits of liberties in public

space. How much can economically powerful social organizations monopolize public

communication? Without such counter publics as graffiti culture these questions are not

even posed.

In this way, graffiti is not only serving the liminal role of a prankster, causing

transformation through disrupting the norm. It is also a mirror and a direct result of

formal signs of communication. In a place where public space is not dominated by

authoritative communication, graffiti would be perceived as an act of deliberation, rather

than vandalism from the outside. A place where informal public communication is

cultivated would have no need for graffiti or at least no fear of it. Education

More research and education is needed to understand the mechanics of the urban

environment. As this research shows, changing perceptions is one important element that

calls for more attention. Policy makers need plausible alternatives to the ones proposed

by Broken Windows. A hopeless attitude like the one expressed by Lorenz reflects the

attitudes of others in power to influence the governance of public space:

I don’t know how to change that perception because it just takes education. We deal with this all the time (Lorenz, interviewed 2002).

Education as a solution has been overlooked or perceived as impractical.

An educational campaign about graffiti damage to small business and local communities

can educate graffiti writers about their impact. Education about graffiti as non-gang

related and its expressive meaning can alleviate fear among the public.

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While safety is addressed in managing public space, the policies being

implemented are incomplete. The methods tend to target marginal groups, defining them

as outsiders. Youth and homeless are largely blamed for signs of disorder and the

solutions for changing misperceptions are aimed at controlling their behavior, rather than

changing perception towards that behavior as well. There is no acknowledgment of the

need for increased public education and, according to the city planners, there are no funds

for this. The funding constraints are questionable, however, when funds for increased jail

space and security cameras are found.

As asserted by the Olympia police chief himself, increased policing is

shortsighted and superficial; a feeling of belonging and ownership needs to be cultivated

in members of a community. In governing public space, city planners need to focus on

social elements that can instill “a sense of self-worth and ownership pride in the

community,” not perpetuate the feelings of anonymity, exclusion and helplessness.

The purpose of this research is to add to the knowledge and understanding about

the importance of communication in public space. If we can start to see value in

“epistemic and aesthetic pluralism” (Ferrell, 1996), then perhaps we will fear each other

less. The issues raised in this thesis wish to draw attention and to stimulate further studies

on communication in public places.

The results of this study suggest that fear is perpetuated by reliance on a simplistic

theory. A community with limited space for civic interaction is more likely to perceive

certain behaviors as threatening, while a public accustomed to a vigorous civic life should

be less threatened by marginal social behaviors. This thesis aims to add to the scholarly

conceptualizations of the public sphere, a physical realm where citizens can have an

opportunity to interact and form social bonds with one another.

In an ideal world, academia and the mass media would play a role in changing

perceptions. New theories offered to journalists could alter the framing of stories

concerned with public environment. While the old journalistic adage “if it bleeds it leads”

may be true, Gerbner’s studies of the mean world syndrome strike a chord in how

storytelling affects our opinion of safety and consequently alters our physical space. An

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educational conference focused on the urban environment can provide invaluable

education for journalists. Experts and scholars can contribute to downtown revitalization

by providing expert opinion on ways to govern public space. Judging from how often

Broken Windows theory is quoted by sources represented in this study, it might indicate

to the academics that there is a receptive ear to practical theories in the audience of the

public as well as policy makers. Further Studies

Admittedly none of the data analyzed here is conclusive. It is based on social

construction, so it is necessary to revisit and re-evaluate the data in future studies. This

research provides a broad look at a variety of discussions related to graffiti management.

This topic would further benefit from more focused studies that deal with individual

themes. For example, a further study could be conducted in interviewing the downtown

senior housing development to find out if the “older consumer” is really scared by graffiti

or if indeed this is simply another urban myth. Machlan noted with surprise that the

seniors in the housing development seem to be pretty quiet about the downtown, contrary

to his expectations. Could this mean that his expectations, much like those of others, are

false, and that the seniors downtown are themselves subjects of a false perception?

Another study could compare different communities where some variables are

drastically different, such as the political climate, youth culture, economy, etc. Also, due

to the time and space limitations of this thesis, the alternative press findings had to be

omitted; however, an interesting conversation was discovered in the local alternative

papers and could provide an added insight into the mechanisms of governance and effects

on communication. Below are a few other topics and questions encountered in the course

of this research that might serve as ideas for more studies.

Subculture and the Media

It is interesting to note that while graffiti is commonly accepted as a sign of a

breakdown of social control (Wilson and Kelling, 1982; Ross and Jang, 2000), the media

also celebrate it. The outlaw culture is an old American tradition. American media come

from a practice of criticizing the corruption of the powerful and sympathizing with the

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poor. Early American tabloids glorified criminals such as Jesse James and politicized

them for their crimes against the wealthy (Kooistra, 1999). Although the modern media

have changed to be much more supportive of the elite rather than the disadvantaged

(Kooistra, 1999), it can be argued that vestiges of this celebration of the outlaw tradition

remain in advertising.

At the same time, graffiti itself seems to be inspired by the grandeur of mass media.

Basquiat explains that his tag SAMO© was meant to suggest a brand name or corporate

logo (Mcguigan, 1985). Tags (as the name suggests) and pieces emulate a personal logo.

Graffiti writers value style, sound bites, efficiency of execution and name recognition

(Cooper and Chalfant, 1984) in the same way as commercial logos. Graffiti exists parallel

to the ubiquity of mass-mediated messages. As the mass media appropriate graffiti,

graffiti seems to mimic the model of commercial advertising and appropriate it for

personal use.

Women

Graffiti is a predominantly male realm. Much like the traditional public sphere it is

reserved for men. The competition and danger have been factors that kept women away.

This is changing, perhaps because graffiti is becoming more accepted and less cutthroat.

Also, women are entering the public space more aggressively as can be evidenced with

the Riot Grrl subculture. In some ways graffiti is safer for girls because they are treated

more gently by police and competing male writers. During the research I encountered an

interesting phenomenon where some of the existing female graffiti writers used male

names as their “word.” My source XX informed me that, somewhat subconsciously, she

chose a male name so that she would not be judged as a girl. Historically, such name

concealment has been common in female authorship. XX told me that writers, familiar

with her artwork, commonly expressed surprise that she was a girl when meeting her

face-to-face.

Race

Although many of the original graffiti artists were of different races, there is an

increasing number of white suburban youth engaging in graffiti. Part of this may be due

86

to the outlaw mystique. According to One and XY, writing is more dangerous for graffiti

writers of color because of racism in the police force. Police and the justice system are

more likely to be lenient towards white middle class youth. First Amendment

Graffiti is seen as threatening because it cannot be controlled. Much like the Internet

quandary, when anyone can write and when anyone can write anonymously and without

consequences, how does society protect itself from hate speech and prurient content? At

the same time, as discussions with the Olympia arts commissioner suggest, there is an

acceptance of sexuality in advertising, which would not pass the scrutiny of arts

commissioners deciding on acceptable content for a public art piece. The difference in

standards reflects the difference between publicly and privately funded representations in

public space. This double standard could be interesting to explore further.

Another issue that comes up under the First Amendment is the freedom from

information. While the Internet can be avoided, it is more difficult to avoid something in

a physical public space. Here the analogy can be better made with radio. There are certain

times of day when speech is more restricted on the radio because it is more difficult to

avoid. So the regulation seems to depend on the publicness of content, and is controlled

by time, place and manner restrictions. A question can be posed: how do different uses of

public space regulated through time, place and manner restrictions affect

communication?

Finally, if the First Amendment is most strongly protected in public speech, but

speech in public has given way to the predominance of advertising, what is the effect on

the First Amendment in terms of speech in public places? Is the argument whether some

graffiti constitutes as art and/or political expression important in terms of the First

Amendment?

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Figure 26. Olympia Graffiti art and politics

88

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The Daily Olympian 2002 Graffiti is sad sight at Heritage Park. (2002, February 27). The Daily Olympian. Burnham, M. (2002, February 28). Graffiti vandals leave mark on Heritage Park: Park stewards bemoan tagging along sea wall. The Daily Olympian. Burnham, M. (2002, March 1). Downtown safety issues not easily defined, solved. The Daily Olympian. Burnham, M. (2002, March 22). The word is in on downtown safety forum. The Daily Olympian. Your Views: Letters to the editor. (2002, March 23). Graffiti artists scored a double victory. The Daily Olympian. Our Views: Safety must be restored. (2002, April, 7). The Daily Olympian. Mattson, V. (2002, April 22). Build a jail before passing ordinances. The Daily Olympian. Burnham, M. and Carlile, J. (2002, April 29). City faces May Day quandary. The Daily Olympian. 2001 Burnham, M. (2001, April 8). Army aids cleanup operation. The Daily Olympian. Tannesen, L. (2001, April 26). Spray –can vandals hit park trees. The Daily Olympian. Graber, J. (2001, September 29). Graffiti attack deemed a hate crime. The Daily Olympian. Our Views: Downtown is looking good. (2001, October 6). The Daily Olympian. Burnham, M. (2001, October 30). Vandals mar garage door flag mural, leave mysterious verse. The Daily Olympian. 2000 Coffidis, J. (2000, March 1). Vandalism frustrates business owners. The Daily Olympian. Setting the record straight about graffiti in Olympia. (2000, April 17). The Daily Olympian.

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Graffiti tagging does not have gang connection, (2000, April, 16). The Daily Olympian. 1999 Callopy, T. (1999, March 14). Graffiti artists loose canvas. The Daily Olympian. Our Views: Crack down on illegal graffiti. (1999, March 19). The Daily Olympian. Callopy, T. (1999, March 19). Artists, business owners discuss downtown graffiti ban. The Daily Olympian. Olympia gets a spring cleaning. (1999, March 28). The Daily Olympian. Gregory, L. (1999, April 9). Why clean walls of graffiti art? The Daily Olympian. Seabert, P. (1999, April 13). Graffiti Art can work downtown. The Daily Olympian. Callopy, T. (1999, April 15). Back wall of Capitol Theater will reopen to graffiti artists. The Daily Olympian. Allesio, J. (1999, April 15). Graffiti should be part of Arts Walk. The Daily Olympian. Our views. (1999, April 22). The Daily Olympian. Bush, F. (1999, September 16). Painting the town…clean. The Daily Olympian. Norris, D. (1999, September 28). Day care kids clean up after graffiti vandals. The Daily Olympian. 1998-97 Taylor, L. (1998, September 4). Alley art unwelcome. The Daily Olympian. Taylor, L. (1998, October 3). Graffitists get wall back for one night. The Daily Olympian. Weatherhogg, J. (1997, November 2). Graffiti irritate downtown merchants. The Daily Olympian.

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Interviews

1. Brown, Vince. Attorney, member of the Cold and Hungry Coalition. Interviewed 5/20/2002.

2. Cooper, Steve. Property owner, owner of a building with a former free wall, graffiti eradication advocate, ODA board member. Interviewed 6/4/2002.

3. Johnson, Stephanie. Arts Walk coordinator, city employee. Interviewed 5/6/2002. 4. Laforge, Ray. Owner of the building housing Wynkoop’s business. Pressured by

ODA to shut down the free wall. Interviewed 5/27/2002. 5. Levine, Harry. Manager of the Olympia Film Society- the site of the remaining

free wall, free wall advocate. Interviewed 5/13/2002. 6. Levine, Larry. Business owner, board member of the ODA. Interviewed

5/20/2002. 7. Lorenz, Connie. Coordinator of the Olympia Downtown Association (ODA).

Interviewed 5/13/2002 8. Machlan, Dick. Olympia Police Department spokes person, administrative

services manager, Community Conversation organizer. Interviewed 6/27/2002 9. McWain, Alan. Business owner, building owner, neighbor to Kanako’s closed

legal wall, graffiti eradication advocate, ODA board member. Interviewed 6/3/2002.

10. Mendoza, Judi. Business owner, building owner, free wall advocate, shares an alley with Kanako Wynkoop. Interviewed 5/25/2002.

11. Oestrike, Linda. Arts Commissioner, city employee. Interviewed 5/6/2002. 12. One. Tagger. Interviewed 5/25/2002. 13. Tassoni, Pat. Editor of the local leftist newspaper, local community activist.

Interviewed 5/6/2002. 14. Wynkoop, Kanako. Business owner, free wall advocate, was asked by owner (Ray

Laforge) to close the free wall on her building. Interviewed 5/13/2002. 15. XY. A well-known Olympia graffiti writer, commercial mural artist. Interviewed

6/8/2002. 16. XX. A well-known female graffiti writer. Interviewed 6/15/2002.

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Appendix A: Informal Interview Guide The interview questions were open ended. They were designed to understand the attitudes towards downtown, uses of public space, and safety. These questions were posed to people both participating and observing a community mural painting event sponsored by the city as part of the Olympia Arts Walk on April 20, 2002.

Probe “yes” or “no” answers for these questions by asking “why” or “why not?”

Do you feel that downtown is a safe place to be? Does it make a difference to you that people are painting on this wall? How likely are you to come back and walk past or through this alley because of the mural? Do you think that this is a good use of public space? Would you like to see more of this around town? Does it make a difference to you that this is public? Do you think that graffiti can be managed in such a way that it could contribute to downtown in a similar way to that of community mural painting? What role do you think police should play in dealing with graffiti? Do you feel that you have the power to influence what happens in your community? Do you think that people are able to work together to improve the quality of life? Do you feel that you have many opportunities to be around people who are very different from you? How important is it to you to be around people who are very different from you? Do you feel that self-representation is possible in your community? Do you feel that the streets are an appropriate place to communicate social change?

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Appendix B: In-depth Interview Guide

The questions below are samples of the in-depth interviews conducted with Olympia community members. The questions were used as ways to probe the sources and facilitate a discussion about graffiti management. Begin with introductions between researcher and the source. Researcher explains the purpose of the project. Ask the participant to talk about how she/he defines graffiti. If this has not been covered ask if the source feels there is any value in graffiti. Ask about what the interviewee knows on the subject of graffiti issues downtown. Ask if the source feels unsafe downtown because of the presence of graffiti. Ask what the source feels are possible ways to manage graffiti. Questions for writers: Why do you write? Do you consider your graffiti writing and art? Why do you tag private property? What makes a location attractive for writing? Questionss for building owners: Did the ODA approach you about graffiti? Do you think that there is a graffiti problem downtown? If "yes,” at what point did graffiti become a problem? Are you accountable to other building owners for spillover? Do you feel safe or unsafe downtown when you see graffiti? Questionss for administrators and activists: Why did the free walls get shut down? Why was one wall reopened? What was your role in this? How do you think graffiti should best be managed? Do you feel safe or unsafe downtown when you encounter graffiti?

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Appendix C: Sample of the Community Conversation Notes

During a public meeting that took place on February 28, 2002, over 300 participants were divided into twenty-two discussion groups of fifteen people each. Each discussion group elected a note-taker and was given the same three questions, set by the City Council. During the public discussion, the note taker wrote down the comments generated in their group of fifteen participants, addressing each question at a time. The notes were collected at the end of the evening and taken for further study by the City Council as well as published on the website (http://www.ci.olympia.wa.us/council/PublicSafety/, 2002) where this information was obtained in June, 2002.

Below is a sample of one question and responses generated by two discussion groups. Each bullet point represents one comment recorded by the note taker. A line separates the two different discussion group’s comments. For a complete record of the notes see the official Olympia website: http://www.ci.olympia.wa.us/council/PublicSafety/ Question #1. Why is this behavior occurring in downtown Olympia?

• People do more objectionable things and are allowed to do it. • More people are in the downtown area. • Criminals are now protected under the name “homeless." • Free food, no rules. • There is a mix of too many sub-cultures I.E. kids who hang around on weekend

nights, homeless people begging, sex offenders, people who go to bars. • No good sheltering system for the homeless. • Not enough public restrooms. • Not enough law enforcement to deal with open criminal behavior. • Too many sex offenders frequent downtown and use free services. • High incidents of alcohol and drug abuse mixed with those who rebel against

society. • Bad behavior is a way some people get recognition. • Lack of services for the mentally ill. • It is politically incorrect to be critical of the homeless. • People give money to panhandlers, which only makes it get worse. • Lack of funding for mental health, job placement and women’s shelters • What is the funding level for social services by the City of Olympia? • The Salvation Army’s policy of keeping 85% of the earnings of their guests. This

forces people out on the street at 6:00A.M. every day who must panhandle to have money for any type of recreation.

• The cost of bus fare prevents many people from leaving downtown. • You can’t get help for those who want help.

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• Only 15% of the homeless actually cause the behavior problems downtown but the rest get blamed for it.

• The jails are too crowded to lock up everyone who breaks the law. • Many of the local homeless probably have homes but come downtown to beg and

cause trouble. • There is not enough community support to change anything downtown.

• People involved in problems aren’t interested in solutions • Olympia perhaps too kind and tolerant • We have a reputation for providing aid • Lack of access to treatment and shelter • Increased drug activity • Increased mental health cases • Downtown a place to see and be seen • Need more drop in places • Downtown easiest place to get to • Inconsistent policies being made • City Council shouldn’t run police • Tension between different groups • City Council tries to micro manage • Reclaim the streets has a philosophy that is not being heard • Not enough public restrooms • If you don’t have money, you are suspect sometimes • More dialogue needed • Must respect the businesses that provide character • Inadequate jail space • Problems are not just youth • St. Peters psychiatric unit is full • Parks like Sylvester are only places all can go to talk, smoke • How much help to homeless is too much • Need to better disburse information • No one segment of people are to blame • Some just don’t care, bored, sick, on drugs • Fear of sex offenders or criminals in general downtown • Lack of over serving control • Lack of youth services (especially for 18 - 21). • Lack of youth services hat are consumer orientated • Concentration of social services • Bus service to outlying areas concentrated in downtown area • Downtown typically lower rent than mall • Lack of plan for homeless