> On the other hand, more effective enforcement is probably mostly going to result in a larger ratio of quick-n-dirty tags, making the overall appearance messie

> On the other hand, more effective enforcement is probably mostly going to result in a larger ratio of quick-n-dirty tags, making the overall appearance messier, uglier and more vandalised. bingo. back in the day in Poland, the Tricity railway picked up a fight against graffiti, they cleaned stuff up quickly, when they couldn't afford to clean they just painted over (kind of vandalised the graffiti, lol), the security got really brutal on writers, and stuff got ugly to a point where people got hurt. as a result, a lot of writers around there pivoted from only painting to some really crazy vandalism action. that attracts more people that less identify themselves as independent artists and more as vandals opposed to the opressive system, and as you can imagine those are harder to work with. fighting youth movements with surveillance and force always gets ugly.