According to Frank Fairbanks, award-winning city manager of Phoenix, Arizona, community participation is key (link will work for about a week). Phoenix, by the way, has been recognized a number of times for its efficient delivery of city services. We even have video of Mr. Fairbanks from his visit to Philadelphia, explaining part of how Phoenix does things "faster and better."
Of course, he's using graffiti as his example of a "big problem" for the "low-income" area of Phoenix so his perspective may not exactly fit with some of the major issues that we face in Philadelphia. Still, it's instructive to see how intensely and deeply the city of Phoenix enlists the help of community residents to perform what some might consider city services. Most importantly, the city makes certain promises that it will hold up its end of the bargain:
Graffiti Busters includes:
- A strong city service delivery team to quickly paint over graffiti
- Effective program measurements and accountability to a 48-hour removal goal
- Extensive outreach enlisting community members to report and paint graffiti, using borrowed city tools and free paint to expedite paint-overs and cut costs
- Use of technology through paint color matching, web-based communications, and motion-activated digital cameras to catch violators
- Outreach training for the community
- Financial rewards for tips that help apprehend graffiti violators
- Prevention activities via city ordinances requiring that retailers lock up spray paint and refuse underage sales
- Assignment of three detectives to investigate graffiti cases
- Prosecution of graffiti vandals to obtain restitution and sentences
- A probation program that allows first-time graffiti vandals to paint out graffiti in lieu of jail time
- Advocacy for state legislative action supporting strong, uniform anti-graffiti laws
Again, I realize it's graffiti that we're talking about here and that the City does have it's own version of this with the Anti-Graffiti Network, but the point is that a major theme that was brought up repeatedly during our Next Mayor Community Forums was the desire for members of the community to have a greater voice in service delivery. Phoenix just provides one example.
As an aside, has anyone ever worked with the Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network? How responsive and effective are they?
Comments (2)
Graffiti is simply the product of boredom, of lack of meaningful and exciting opportunity, of making your mark (no pun intended) when there's no other good opportunity to. And in Philadelphia's case, very often it's those doing the only thing of themselves that they can get away with doing, those who are on a determinism circuit especially. That is, a life ahead laid out for them where absolutely nothing is of their own choosing. And not that graffitying really makes this any better. Which is why most all the graffiti you see in Philadelphia now puts forth an illegible message. For why bother having it make sense if no one's taking it seriously anyway, other than to say how awful it looks?
And it's especially always so ironic when you see graffiti spraypainted over murals done by the Anti-Graffiti Network. That is, talk about coming full circle!
But just studying the history of graffiti, back in the days when people in charge were listening, when there was real effort to -- all in the name of trying to make liberty and justice a reality for all -- graffiti was legible. You could read it and know what was being said. But when the whole yuppie circuit thing was introduced and it no longer mattered what everyday people felt, graffiti continued, but it stopped making sense. Graffiti is one side of the conversation between the oppressed and the powers that be. And it is a reflection of that oppressive voice of the empowered side in this back and forth communication. In the '60s, graffiti made sense. It made sense to make sense. In the '70s we saw an evolution where it stopped making as much sense but at least there was an effort to try to make it look attractive. In the '80s communication was fully displaced with simply trying to make it look attractive. And from this trend, incidentally, the Anti-Graffiti Network was born. And then that gave away to where it not only made no sense but was hideous to look at. Which is exactly what we have now when we think of graffiti. And we paint it over and paint it over and it keeps coming back and coming back each time. And why? Because people ultimately are not made to be put on determinismistic cradle-to-grave circuits (if you'll excuse my poetic license of creating a new word there.) And graffiti is one of the things that results when we try to impose that. And rather than getting this, in our stupidity we paint it over.
If you look to Philadelphia's past, or to places in the world now where people still are able to make all their own decisions and to make headway in life on that basis, you won't see graffiti. And if Phoenix now, Phoenix of all places, is seeing graffiti, it means it's really screwing up now in ways it didn't before. Without the need for determinism, people know who they are and what they're meant to do in life. But block that natural order of things by imposing determinism and casting peoples' free will by the wayside, and there will be graffiti, no matter how much or how many times anyone tries to permanently paint it over. To quote Paul Simon, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, and tenement halls, and whispered in the sounds of silence."
Posted by Steve W. | June 14, 2007 1:52 AM
Dan,
Perhaps we could say the truest indicator of a city's health is revealed in its graffiti?
Posted by Steve W. | June 14, 2007 11:27 PM