Oz Graff and Banksy

Stencil graffiti can be annoying and funny at the same time

This week I'm at the University of Sydney, Australia for a Crime and SafeGrowth workshop.

It gives me a chance to wander the streets of this beautiful city and compare it to my experience last year and a decade ago. In 1998 Sydney was a city of graffiti. Last year, not so much. Much has happened in Sydney, and in the world of graffiti, in the past year.

Some of the trends appeared in blogs I've written on train graffiti, murals, and the ICA Graffiti Guidebook.

Graffiti is called graff by practitioners of this underground über-chic, street artists, wanna-be street artists, and just plain sweaty vandals. Graff is pandemic in both virtual and real space all over the world.

Take for example the stencil graffiti trend started by Britain's anarchist Robin Hood, Banksy. Stencil graffiti now makes appearances in art galleries and in art books. Graff-folk gather on websites to advertise their wares or simply look for cities to "practice". Says a graff-writer in one post:

I'm from Los Anzgeles and will be out in Sydney next week. Although I'm not traveling for graff I would DEFINITELY like to paint while I'm there (as well as stickers)... If anyone can give any info on ANY cool spots to paint as well as GET paint I would greatly appreciate this...

Police and prevention specialists tinker at the edge of graff, sending in the enforcers, writing new laws and installing CCTV. Police map it along with other crimes. But it seems they simply don't get what is going on.

Graffiti mapping in Sydney, Australia

In Sydney, like elsewhere, traditional enforcement tactics hold back the tide: anti-graffiti teams, resistant sprays, CPTED lighting, and so forth (probably why graffiti has somewhat declined in Sydney).

The truth is, like most large cities, in Sydney resistant pockets flourish - some interesting and inventive, most just blight. Example: Around Sydney's central train station where CCTV watched everywhere, I counted 31 public murals, every one graffitied.

Most public murals are not graffitied. Then again, these were not "community-based" murals painted by local artists. They looked corporate, perhaps designed by city or train station officials.

Banksy's documentary film, Exit Through The Gift Shop premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last year. It is well done, glorifies the good, bad and ugly, but more importantly it provides insight; insight we need to better understand the future of the public realm.

It also suggests to some degree, like it or not, the once-maligned is now going mainstream.

Radical Common Sense

Seeing things a new way

This week I chatted with my very dedicated Houston SafeGrowth folk working on their projects. They were looking for crime stats and maps. Nowadays such things are online in most cities. In Houston the police stats and local media crime trackers are both freely available.

Information gathering is frequently overlooked while developing solutions to crime. I cringe when I see unsupported assumptions guiding actions. So with their risk assessment underway, the Houston SafeGrowthers are doing an excellent job of getting their stories just right.

Interestingly, over the years I've learned that, by itself, information gathering is insufficient, a possible flaw in the fashionable evidence-based prevention and policing programs.

Part of the problem is what Toffler calls obsoledge – obsolete knowledge. Knowledge is always changing, especially knowledge about safety and our ideas on how to improve it. As we gain a fact, it is already obsolete and incomplete. As any crime analyst will tell you, nowhere is this truer than in crime stats. Over the years I have seen many evidence-based strategies create an echo chamber of misinformation.

Crime data isn't enough








While evidence is important, the problem is our belief in common sense and how we use that evidence to lead others to solutions. Leadership being the operative word.

We use the term “common sense” believing it a practical way to think about getting things done. But beneath common sense are a bunch of assumptions leading to contrived solutions that don’t get things done. Solutions like solving crime with incarceration, more cops, or cameras. I wrote about Zimring’s book Crime Decline and Waller’s book Less Law, More Order to tackle some of that misinformation.

Perhaps a better way to proceed is to use Radical Common Sense.

Futurist Marilyn Ferguson says Radical Common Sense is accepting we cannot solve our deepest problems through traditional ways or wishful thinking. We must learn the lessons of modern biology; a natural world that works more through altruism and cooperation (live and let live) than by competition (every man for himself). It means we accept the criminal justice system for the adversarial, blunt tool that it is and instead see our future in cooperating, sharing best practices, and accepting that our fate is tied to that of others.

Radical Common Sense is leadership based on our ability to teach others, ourselves and our ability to change accordingly. Who does Radical Common Sense in our line of work?

My recent favorites include Jim Rough and his wisdom councils and Mark Lakeman and his city repair movement. Each have questioned basic assumptions and learned to change their view. They identify the consequences of their solutions from many different sides, but they do their reasoning in collaboration with those in the community, not only from a lab, ivy hall, or computer screen.

Radical Common Sense ideas can be simple and beautiful






Here's the thing; What characterizes these Radical Common Sensers is how they minimize their time in regret or complaint. As Ferguson says, every event is a lesson to them and every person a teacher. That, of course, is the classic definition of a grassroots, community leader. It's also how we create successful SafeGrowth practice and safer neighborhoods.

The not-so-hidden agenda is the conviction that leadership must become a grassroots phenomenon if our societies are to thrive. If that strikes you as unlikely, consider first of all that nothing else is likely to work. And secondly, be aware that people already secretly suspect that they are capable of taking charge. [Ferguson, 2005, Aquarius Now: Radical Common Sense].