What is street art? Who is the street artist? Why is street art a crime? Street Art, Public City: Law, Crime and the Urban Imagination engages with these questions in order to understand how street art reveals new modes of citizenship in the contemporary city. It examines the histories of street art and the motivations of street artists, and the experiences both of making and looking at street art in public space. The book will be of interest to readers concerned with art, culture, law, cities and urban space.

Chapter 1 The Situational Artwork; encounter watching JR, Chapter 2 The Cities in the City; encounter criminal damage?, Chapter 3 Cityscapes; encounter losing the image, Chapter 4 Criminalising the Image; encounter things on walls, Chapter 5 Street Art and Spatial Politics; encounter Banksy under glass, Chapter 6 Transformations: Urban Imagination in the Public City, Bibliography, Index

Alison Young is a Professor of Criminology in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne.