Challenges in the creation of murals: A theoretical framework

Murals have become a familiar element in urban landscapes around the world, providing benefits for individuals, communities, and cities. Many murals have been co-opted by city administrations as part of broader municipal policies. Despite the benefits associated with murals, they provoke tensions and contradictions that challenge policymakers, owners, communities, and those involved in their creation. This paper explores and maps the difficulties and challenges associated with placing murals in the public realm, providing a theoretical framework and highlighting their complexity. Additionally, we demonstrate how these challenges may turn into real-life disputes, cause public outrage, and create tensions between stakeholders in a manner which affects cityscape and urban development. Through case-examples from Portland and Philadelphia, we demonstrate how our theoretical framework can be used to better understand these challenges, and to explore how a range of interests might clash in the face of said challenges.