The Art of Urban Warfare

The Global Urban Network of Street Art

Abstract

This study examines street art as a form of popular culture, popular communication, and
popular spatial resistance that connects cities and the people in them. Taking a cultural
studies approach, it asserts that street art serves not only as a medium for self-
expression, but as a means for reclaiming public spaces, communicating to the masses,
and forming local and global social networks. In the context of the discourse on cultural
globalization, global cities, and global city network theory, it argues that street art and
the artists who create it form inter-city networks of ‘multi-local’ popular resistance. Newly
compiled quantitative data from six global artists produce complete network matrices
and visualizations representative of a weighted, directional network of eight cities. Social
network analysis is used in demonstrating this global urban network of street art, and
discussing its properties and wider implications. The analysis illustrates the existence of
global urban networks based on subcultural practice, suggesting an important new way
of looking at global city networks and revealing the potential for other such studies.

“Where are the Champions

of Open Spaces?” on
construction site, the
Borough, London. Photo by
the author, 2004.