Lewis Bivona reached out to me to encourage me to share his new blog, South Jersey Planner, with my audience. It’s my pleasure to share an excerpt from one of his first posts on Camden, titled: Planning Idea: The Tao of Planning in Camden, NJ:
I was recently reading about assemblyman Angel Fuentes, who represents Camden in the New Jersey state assembly. I was struck by his record on graffiti removal, which Latinwhoswho.net describes as a “crusade” and “which included the establishment of an anti-graffiti task force, the implementation of an anti-graffiti curriculum in local schools, and a related hotline.”
Compare this to Brazil’s Law 706/07, which legalized street art (including graffiti) across the country beginning in 2009, so long as the artist received consent from the property owner. Simple as that. Now, I don’t want to repeat the extensive work that’s already been done on the subject, but take a moment to look into the explosive grafite movement that began in Brazil.
In case you haven’t seen it in a while, Camden still has plenty of graffiti. Plenty, despite all the oversight and hotlines. And because graffiti has been so heavily targeted, no street artist dares to risk taking the time to paint detailed, intricate work. Instead, we get an abundance of hastily made tags that make battered neighborhoods look worse. Because of the region we live in, there should be beautiful street art all over. The Greater Philadelphia area has some of the best street art in the world. Period. Here’s a simple anecdote to prove it: a friend of mine took an opportunity through the Rowan University Geography Department a couple of years ago to travel to Brazil for the summer. While there they had the opportunity to meet a world-famous street artist from Rio at his studio. The coffee table books at his studio were about Philadelphia street art. When my friend said she was from Philly, the artist began bombarding her with questions about the city’s murals.
In a different world, Camden could be the world’s largest canvas for a brilliant street art movement.
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