Tearing Down the Streets

"From New York to San Francisco, Times Square to The Tenderloin, graffiti artists, young people, radical environmentalists, and the homeless clash with police on city streets in an attempt to take back urban spaces from the developers and the "Disneyfiers." Drawing on more than a decade of first-hand research and participation in a variety of cities, including Denver, San Francisco, New York, Amsterdam, Prague, Phoenix, and Flagstaff, this account of Ferrell's adventures goes inside the worlds of street musicians, homeless gutter punks, militant bicycle activists, high-risk "BASE jump" parachutists, skateboarders, outlaw radio operators, and hip hop graffiti artists to explore the day-to-day battles over public life and public space.

Along the way the book investigates a remarkable range on contemporary public controversies involving these underground groups, documenting the ways in which their on-the-street anarchist polities and cultural self-invention shape resistance to new forms of spacial and legal control, and tracing the roots of this resistance through a subversive past that stretches from the Paris Commune of 1871 to the punks of the 1970s. This look at extreme urban subcultures asks "whose city is it?" and argues for a disorderly urban culture in place of the Disneyfied city."--Jacket.