281–290 of 474 posts
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This is a fascinating comment. How would you define violence?
If I smash your car, is that violence or not? What if I take care to smash your car only so much that it will still be able carry you to work and back?
They specifically mention railway noise. I wonder whether there's something special about railways, or whether it would work for other noise as well? Especially roads with cars on them?
Highways care a lot less about location. Place them a one-minute car ride outside the city, and its noise becomes basically irrelevant. The city grows and swallows the highway? Just place an industrial area or mall between the highway and any homes. When homes aren't an arms-length away you can get away with far more primitive noise reduction.
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I think I’d be relatively happy if I woke up one day and saw a banksy or an invader mosaic on my wall. I’ve seen graffiti art that definitely improved grey ugly walls and barriers. I’ve also seen ugly tags that are nothing more than letters. It’s relative
Is not relative at all to rational people. Let me just put it this way, do I get to just move into your home and take it over simply because I believe that I can make it a better home than you can? Do I get to steal your car/property because I believe I can make better use of it? Stop rationalizing narcissistic behavior and people trying to impose themselves on others. It’s not relative at all. You or the narcissisti…
For whatever reasons, Germany is rather lenient towards graffiti artists which, in my eyes, makes Berlin more enjoyable than it would be otherwise.
I've lived in a lot of places and I've learned that I hate grey boring walls a lot, I much prefer it when they're covered by colorful graffitis. It seems I'm not the only one so some localities tend to be rather lenient towards graffiti artists and even invite them, other places are much stricter and so you can enjoy bleak concrete walls unblemished by any graffitis.
As to your example about homes, well, in France and in some other European countries, in the 90s there was a bit of a left leaning political push for "right to lodgings". This movement made squatting much easier (in France, it was extremely difficult to get rid of squatters if they moved in past 48 hours). I've always personally thought those laws were stupid and they were eventually repealed and amended recently. But that's the way it is with governments, you don't get to agree with all the decisions made. If it's a democracy you have some measures of influence.
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Most graffitis I've seen are on empty walls or buildings with no ads. Brick wall looks way better without them. And to me it looks more like it's the graffiti maker that thinks that they own the wall and can choose what should be on it.
Property that is used by the public should be owned by the public. By that logic, graffiti artists as regular people who use public infrastructure in the area should as much right to paint on the wall as you do to paint the wall in your house. And you can paint over it if you hate it so much. But its all down to the community. It should not be a crime enforced by a ruling class who nominally owns the wall but doesn't…
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> My 2 year old can draw better. Seems like you got the idea. Give her some stencils and have some fun.
So your solution to vandalism is to give in to vandals and vandalize your building yourself?
My university for example, in every single room, every single table is scribbled on and marked for years and years. When I arrived there as a fresh faced student I saw scribbles that were 30 years old. Some people left their names, some people said they didn't like professor X, some people left Maxwell's equations on there. I'm so glad the university didn't consider it vandalism. This could be applied to so many more things. It had zero negative impact on my education or experience in the classroom, so how can it be considered vandalism?
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That implies that there was a party available that would ban billboards. There isn't, so graffiti is a way of actually taking back agency over our public spaces by underrepresented counterculture. Deal with it.
> Deal with it. Incentivizing violence? Bold strategy.
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Unfortunately, life is not black and white. Even without knowing anything about graffiti culture, there is a border between defacing and improving. And graffiti artists are moving over that border back and forth. Some of the most beautiful art I have seen are graffiti
What a strange argument that seems to romanticise this "border" called "the law". It is black and white: someone is defacing something that doesn't belong to them. You can call the result whatever you want ("art","expression" etc) but the fundamental issue doesn't change. Would you be happy to wake up and see your car covered in paint? What about the windows on your house? Would you see this as an "improvement" too?
Just because something is illegal, does not make it immoral or unethical by itself.
I do understand the argument against graffiti, but there’s also something to be said about any kind of expression that’s inherently rebellious and counter-culture.
> Would you be happy to wake up and see your car covered in paint? What about the windows on your house? Would you see this as an "improvement" too?
Correct me if I’m wrong but the vast majority of graffiti is on public walls and facades, and not on houses or cars. At least here in the Netherlands that’s what I’ve seen.
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Are you suggesting most people enjoy graffiti? Because I don't know anyone irl who does so I'm a bit surprised by this perspective. I've personally always viewed it as equivalent to littering and assumed the ones doing it were just thrill seekers up until now...
I love this. I read so much criticism here, but noise pollution is a main issue when it comes to railroads in residential zones. Yes, punctuality is an issue with Deutsche Bahn. No, this doesn’t fix that instantly. But as an organisation you can work on two things at the same time. This invention is spectacular. I wish more people would work on noise pollution. It makes a huge difference.
> I wish more people would work on noise pollution Absolutely agree. It's one of the most insidious kinds of pollution that has big effects on mental and cardio-vascular health, and is accumulative. Everything from aircraft, to emergency vehicle sirens, to construction and poor housing, is slowly killing people. In Europe we've actually made big leaps forward with regulation, building standards for isolation, and aba…