Do Legal Graffiti Walls work?
The City of Ottawa’s three legal graffiti walls will be monitored for a one-year period to evaluate their effectiveness in reducing graffiti. Both local and international research has shown that while legal graffiti walls are implemented with good intentions, legal walls in fact act as a graffiti “magnet” attracting graffiti vandals from outside the community. Areas where graffiti walls have been installed have seen improvements in the short term, but over an extended period of time, have seen an increase in graffiti on surrounding walls. Legal walls can also send mixed messages to graffiti vandals about the acceptance of graffiti in a neighbourhood or community.
