What is up with graffiti in Milan? (life, Italians, cons)

[Bulok]

I have been looking at Google street views of various areas of Milan and there is graffiti everywhere. What is up with that? And it's not like the good art kind, it's mostly tags. It just looks so trashy and ghetto.

[soUlwounD]

I don't appreciate those either. At least learn to draw

[manbury]

You just found out that Milan, despite its business mindset and its economic power, is still an Italian city.

And the Italians are a rather disorganized, undisciplined bunch I am afraid.

PS I am Italian so...

[NOLA101]

All Italian cities have graffiti everywhere.

[forgotten username]

I have become so accustomed to it that when I come back to France I find that the cities look super clean and lifeless.

[Minato ku]

In fact, when I look Milan on Google street view, it seem better than what it was when I went there in August 2003.

[Bulok]

Originally Posted by NOLA101

All Italian cities have graffiti everywhere.

That's unfortunate. How do you know when you're in the bad part of town then?

[vesnanor]

Don't like that, Zagreb have same problem with tags all over a city. New building or old restored and fresh tag.

[survivingearth]

Graffiti is a troubling some problem in Italy. In general, Italian cities are dirty and filled with graffiti. Is it a money issue or the responsible authorities just don;t care about it?

[forgotten username]

Italians like to express themselves, and public space is usually considered to belong to nobody, whereas it could be considered to belong to everybody.

I don't know, it's part of the cities. Actually I kinda like it, I always find funny things written on walls that otherwise you would not even look at.

Of course on monuments it's stupid, actually here monuments are pretty much preserved from that, but on random walls in streets I find it pretty cool to see traces of humanity. Here in the center there is a large neighborhood that is the student area, and there are writings / paintings everywhere, and some of them are really great.

Spoiler

Of course not everything is at that level, but I find it pretty cool that they exist.