The Graffiti Storyline and Urban Planning : Key Narratives in the Planning, Marketing, and News Texts of Santalahti and Hiedanranta

Abstract

This article regards urban planning as a form of storytelling and argues that there is significance in whose stories and which storylines are acknowledged to belong to the narrative fabric of a place and how the stories of future districts are communicated to the public through narratives during a planning project. My focus is on the storyline that follows the activity of graffiti culture in the two case areas of Santalahti and Hiedanranta (located in the city of Tampere in Finland) during these areas’ phases of transition created during the redevelopment of former industrial areas into residential districts. In my discursive analysis I identify key narratives that recur in planning, marketing, and news texts concerning the two case areas. These narratives are 1) Progress and Innovations, 2) The Old with the New, 3) The Warm, Welcoming Home, 4) Together with Communities, 5) Ruin and Despair, 6) Graffiti as Art and a Pastime, and 7) The Underground. The key narratives offer insight into the means by which the stories of the two future forms of the districts are distributed to the audience by various agents, the narratives that are dominant, and the degree to which the existence of the graffiti storyline is visible in them.