Urban Street Art a Sign of Representing Culture, Economics & Politics of the Cities.

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to study the importance of urban street art as an integral component of the city image, rather than being just defined or limited to wall graffiti, it has been extended to contain other forms of arts, compositions, sculptures, and various forms of mural arts, that were applied and integrated an applied on building walls, streets, landscape, fences, street furniture, and many other components of the built-in environment, these various forms of urban street arts represents different values of the society, and reflects various waves of development in political, cultural and socio-economic contexts. while urban street art is considered as a direct reflection of many changes that happens to a community, as the people try to express their impressions, views, anger, etc. in different forms, using street art as a documentation for such movements, and dynamics that happens, whether on the walls of buildings, railway/metro fences, underground stations, and other urban forms as mentioned above. Thus leading to a change in the built in environment features, sometimes positively by adding a more living sense & aesthetic value to it, and sometimes negatively by adding some drawings or writings that only express the feel of anger for example with no recognized aesthetic value, and a third extreme possibility of vandalism. This type of art was always relevant to a certain level of democracy, and political systems that can accept such way(s) of expressions, and in a context that creates art, appreciates arts in general, and use it in expression. While the case was different in other countries, where art wasn’t that important value, and where the political systems deprived people from expressing their views even in the most traditional ways, being involved also in an endless cycle of socio-economic complicated problems, especially in the developing countries, and the image was clearer in the under developed countries. in other words, this means that such type of art was developed in already developed countries, where urban contexts, and architecture were already well established, settled, organized, and all the channels of expression are maturely used by the communities. How this type of art represents the peoples’ culture, values, and the country’s political & economic positions are the different questions this paper is targeting to find the suitable answer, in addition to how it was integrated with the built in environment represented in architecture and urban contexts and adding a living sense to them.

Keywords: Street art, Graffiti, Urban street art, composition, landscape, building envelope