When the street becomes a pedagogue

Abstract

I’ve long been interested in the way that public space comes to be used to present the ideas of private concerns. I’ve never quite understood why a fast food chain can blatantly display their ideas in the streetscape, yet graffiti and street art is considered the work of criminals. I’ve found much of my professional activity, including PhD research, devoted to the exploration of how signage is deployed and appropriated and want to draw on a couple of these research projects to explain how I see the public pedagogical intent of urban signage functioning in the street-scape.