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Surfaces have taught me most of the things I know about cities – and this is the knowledge I tried to capture in my book. The story in the book evolves from an evaluation of the material appearance of surfaces and inscriptions, into an interpretation of their political and symbolic significance.

I examine where signs appear, what enables them to be there or, on the contrary, what hinders their presence, and what mechanisms are developed to enforce these regulations.

Can a wall “ask for” street art more readily than for public notices, advertising messages, or graffiti tags?

What makes a surface attract or reject specific types of signage?

How can surfaces and inscriptions be transformative agents in struggles for spatial justice?

And who should decide what cities look like?  

Highlights: a theory and methodology of urban surfaces (#surfacestudies – you heard it here first!), a critical history of #graffiti and #streetart, an overview of how the law deals with walls and inscriptions in cities, a wall interview, a #manifesto for the right to the surface, and a bunch of delightful colour photographs…

Introduction: the city of surfaces

Welcome to the universe of surface studies, a way of seeing and knowing urban life through examining public walls and surfaces. The intro sets to demonstrate that a history of contemporary urban cultures can be written through the surfaces of the city, and opens up the journey towards writing this history.

Surface semiotics: a manual for knowing surfaces

This chapter establishes the field of surface semiotics. It analyses traffic signs, advertising posters, and unsanctioned markings as collective spatial agents, alongside ambitions of urban order and morality which are enforced through clean surfaces. It argues that surfaces are visible results of ideas about cities, challenges to those ideas, and the policies put in place to manage these tensions. Plural surface discourse is discussed as a site of urban politics.

Beyond art and crime: a critical history of graffiti and street art

This chapter investigates the histories of graffiti and street art, and their representations in media and public consciousness. It critiques the management of surface inscriptions as either “art” or “crime”, through an innovative interpretation of the governance and art market agendas that have instrumentalised wall-writing practices.

Law and graffiti: property, crime, and the surface commons

This chapter utilises graffiti to question the legal geographies of property and order. It defines a space for the surface in legal discourse, and explores the possibility of acknowledging a distinctive spatial and legal typology: the surface commons.

Leake Street London: legal walls and deep surfaces

Leake Street is London’s largest free graffiti area, where painting is permitted and uncurated. This chapter goes through the multi-layered history, ownership, and management of the Leake Street Tunnel, to trace its graffiti-enabled growth and to critique the consumerist policies that led to its change.

Conclusion: cultural heritage and the right to the surface city

The book ends by suggesting this is just the beginning of a project of global walls and surface cultures, to understand the ways in which surfaces and inscriptions support access to, and exclusion from, urban life around the world.

The right to the city is the right to the surface: a manifesto