I had a wonderful conversation the other day with VCU student and Chief Copyeditor at Ink Magazine, Monisha Mukherjee, who wrote a piece on this phenomenon called “graffiti gentrification,” which refers to city displacement as it relates to street art. Reading her article, I became engrossed with the interplay of Richmond’s art and urban economics. Something we all so deeply appreciate, standing as a symbol for social justice and the beautiful cultures of Richmond city, may be counteracting its very message. 

Richmond is extremely well-known for its street art—a highlight of the city’s famous social and cultural scene. Yet in its intricacies, in researching the areas of the city where street art is most prevalent, lies a critical issue. The most common areas for street art are also the most gentrified neighborhoods in Richmond. Landlords/city councils purposefully install street art as a way to transform a dated, less desirable neighborhood into a place that would seem trendy and socially-active, attracting younger, higher-income creatives. In doing so, they’re able to raise rent prices and place old tenants out who can no longer afford to live there—displacing historical communities. 

There is a paradoxical layer to this. At its core, graffiti—or any street art for that matter—is the language of minority youth and counterculture; a form of rebellious expression by predominantly black and brown communities. Those who were silenced by soceity made the illegal act of graffiti their voice. These same communities, however, are forced out of increasingly gentrified neighborhoods partly by a more socially-acceptable, legitimized form of the same art: murals. The takeover by murals is nothing but a tool of gentrification.

It’s no surprise that the neighborhoods in Richmond with the highest rise in murals coincide with a steady rise in property value, and that every neighborhood facing the takeover of murals was once a redlined, no-go area which would have been otherwise filled with graffiti. A prime example: the district of Jackson Ward. It’s the most historic neighborhood in the city and the most heavily gentrified/beautified—with murals painted over whitewashed, previously graffitied walls. As the socioeconomic makeup of Jackson Ward shifts towards a young, whiter population in response to beautification efforts (including, of course, murals), rent prices skyrocket. 

In speaking with Monisha, I asked her what she thought could be done at a policy level to mitigate this. For one, she held that mural artists who are commissioned by landlords to paint on buildings should pitch part of the profits back into the community and the original tenants. Even groups that conduct street walking tours through gentrified neighborhoods should pitch into helping the tenants in the neighborhoods. 

It isn’t necessarily that street art is a negative, yet it’s important for us all to acknowledge the role murals in particular can play in historical neighborhoods and bring a level of complexity to something as simple as appreciating a painting on the side of the street.