Have Mayor Daley's Graffiti Blasters Helped Make Graff Flourish?

That's the thesis of a Chicago News Cooperative story that ran in the Sunday Times. Citing The History of American Graffiti, a new book that comes out in April, the article finds that Mayor Daley's aggressive approach to graffiti removal created "a kind of natural-selection process" that weeded out the wannabes and enabled only the serious graffiti writers to survive. According to the article, the city will spend an estimated $5.5 million on graff removal this year, despite a $487 million budget deficit. All of this raises an obvious question: When Mayor-elect Emanuel (who himself has already been immortalized in street art) inherits the Graffiti Blasters fleet, will he continue Daley's hard-line approach?
· Crackdown Feeds a Flourishing World of Graffiti [Chicago News Cooperative]