Urban Interventions in a Global City: Dissensus, Consensus and Ambivalence in The Streets of London

Abstract

In this article I analyze urban interventions as communicative practices that can become visual “scenes of dissensus”, i.e. political disruptions made by emerging voices. In three of the cases I present, activists use a variety of tactics and techniques to make their claims be seen on the surfaces of the city. These actions can generate diverse meanings and have different impacts. One of the cases confirmsthat corporate discourses can appropriate urban interventions, showing that important contemporary urban expressions such as graffiti and street art might turn into consensus, as part of the increasing phenomenon of the commodification of urban space. I will conclude by stressing the importance of approaching urban interventions as creative practices that reflect and (re)produce the movement, the complexity, the ambivalence, and the contradictions that are inherent to everyday life in global cities.