Cities in the City: Street Art, Enchantment, and the Urban Commons

Cities are sites of cultural and aesthetic production engaged in a continual process through which human subjects refine the images of the spaces in which everyday life takes place. Dominant approaches to legal governance in the city construct it as a “legislated city” or “lawscape,” but this is not the only manner in which the city can be conceptualized and experienced. A number of artistic, social, and literary interventions suggest the possibility of “uncommissioned” cities existing in tandem with the conventionally legislated city. This article examines the conceptualization of the city underlying the novel The City & the City (2009), by China Miéville, and a number of artists who situate their artworks in urban space. The experience of viewing illicit images, whether experienced by the spectator as delightful or distressing, is one of “enchantment,” to draw upon Jane Bennett's sense of the term. The enchanting encounter with an illicit image reveals the existence of uncommissioned cities within the legislated one, and points to alternative conceptualizations of citizenship, property, and of cities themselves.