Tag team

File under: graffiti, street art, urbanism, Wellington

We've already had a few discussions here on WellUrban about graffiti, and while I've tended to be sceptical of anti-graffiti "flying squads" while singing the praises of street art in Waitangi Park and Ghuznee Street's "Graffiti Alley", a lot of other people see all graffiti as mindless vandalism. There's been a bit of a debate over on Texture about "friggin' taggers", and I of course waded in with a qualified defence.

Now the Architectural Centre has weighed in to oppose the flying squad ("Look out Sarge, 'e's got a sprayer!"), and while the local media don't seemed to have picked up on it, there was an article in the Sunday Herald about it. I hope that the council's hit squad has the discrimination to leave the creative stuff alone, and to realise that some walls are better off being used as a canvas than left blank, but I also don't like it when sculptures and good buildings get defaced. So where does one draw the line between street art and destructive stupidity?