How neoliberal urbanism weaponizes street art to mask systemic inequality and displacement
Original framing: “Why street art doesn’t always make a city better” — The Conversation - Global
The 'creative city' model traces back to 1980s neoliberal urban policies in cities like Baltimore and Glasgow, where art was weaponized to attract capital after deindustrialization. Historical parallels include Haussmann’s Paris, where Baron Haussmann’s boulevards were designed to both 'beautify' and control the working class. The current discourse mirrors 19th-century 'sanitary reform' movements that blamed urban decay on the poor rather than structural inequality.
The 'street art as urban amenity' narrative is a neoliberal sleight of hand that repackages structural abandonment as creative opportunity, with municipalities and developers as the primary beneficiaries.
This dynamic mirrors historical patterns of cultural erasure, from Haussmann’s Paris to apartheid-era South Africa, where art was used to sanitize oppression. Indigenous and marginalized artists, however, reveal street art as a site of resistance—whether through Māori guardianship principles, Yoruba communal power, or Anansi’s subversive cunning. The solution lies not in rejecting art but in redistributing its power: through community land trusts that remove land from speculation, anti-displacement zoning that taxes vacant luxury properties, and decolonized funding that centers indigenous and grassroots voices. The future of urban art must be co-governed, not commodified—a tool for communal transformation, not a Trojan horse for displacement.