Cities are urgently playing the deliberate gentrification/beautification card by bringing in the murals to give the place a facelift: Richmond just finished their third, Chicago is gearing up for a new mural program this week, and we are getting emails every few days from city planners around the world who would like to explore how to juice their flagging de-industrialized economy. And why not? New studies report that it raises your property values and advertisers are happy to join in to sponsor the events.

Is it Street Art? Most experts would say not- they lack the freewill autonomous nature and illegal aspects of the original Street Art scene – especially when their content is so sternly steered away from political or challenging themes and have corporate and state sponsorship. These are public/commercial mural programs – with work done by people who often are Street Artists.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Audio Surveillance Zone, Balu, Chamberlin Newsome, Claw Money, Clock, D*Face, De Grupo, FR, Gold Dust, Gregos, Selfable City, Sheryo, Smart Crew, Specter, Strok, The Yok, TMO Plater, and Vexta.

Our top image: Balu for Centrefuge Project. Balu based this piece on a photo from 1975 as a tagger was getting up in the NYC Subway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

VEXTA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Antennae (photo © Jaime Rojo)

TMO Plater and Claw Money for Centrefuge Project. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chamberlin Newsome (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Clock in Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unidentifed (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Yok and Sheryo (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Gregos in Berlin (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Specter AD Takeover. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Specter AD Takeover. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Smart Crew in Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Now that is planning ahead! Artist Unidentifed in Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

STROK painted this miniature stencil on a roll down gate while visiting Brooklyn recently. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sellfable City in Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

FR in Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Gold Dust (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D*Face and Shepard Fairey for Urban Nation ONE Wall. Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Audio Surveillance Zone in Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

DE Grupo (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Peonies. Brooklyn, NYC. April 2016.(photo © Jaime Rojo)

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