Saturday, 23 June 2012

Pavement chalking anarchy again

Oh dear, three year old Emerson has been chalking on the sidewalk (pavement to UK readers). Usually her drawings are of hearts and flowers, deemed by some neighbours to be 'distracting and offensive blights on their community'. It sounds like deliberate provocation.

Welcome to the neighbourhood of Stapleton in Denver. The homeowner's association says that

'anything that offends, disturbs or interferes with the peaceful enjoyment isn’t allowed on shared spaces... Neighbors have been complaining about chalk drawings like Emerson's.'

They sound a pleasant bunch don't they? Perhaps the sort of folk of whom Richard Sennett wrote, possibly before some of them were born, that they have

'so little tolerance for disorder in their own lives, and hav[e] shut themselves off so that they have little experience of disorder as well...'

Via Atlantic Cities.

Previously:

Pavement chalking: this time seen in a positive light

'If it can be washed away, it's not graffiti. But'

Pavement chalking epidemic?

Footnote on pavement chalking

 

 

23 Jun 2012 11:38:04 | Neighbourhood relations, Space and place

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Kevin Harris

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