Street Art Participation in Increasing Investments in the City Center of Bucharest, a Paradox or Not?

Abstract

This article analyses street art’s contribution to the current economic life in the city center of an Eastern European capital, Bucharest. The development of socio-economic activities in the Romanian capital has been strongly influenced in the last 30 years by a complex of effects generated by the transition to the capitalist economy in the early 1990s, the impact of globalization, and recently the COVID-19 pandemic. This study focuses on the investigation of those areas that through street art came to know processes of urban regeneration. By applying semi-structured interviews to providers of alternative guided tours, but also questionnaires among the population that is familiar with this subculture, including an organization of urban regeneration through street art, an important number of economically new spaces, next to reinvented ones, have been investigated. In these areas, street art ends up by supporting activities from hospitality, cultural, and creative industries, changing for the better the perspectives of economic and cultural development, along with the attractiveness of the Bucharest city center. Street art proves to be an important tool in the regeneration process bringing positive effects when involving active cooperation between the public and the private sectors.