I have yet to travel to a country where I didn't see graffiti. Even in notoriously heavy-handed countries like Singapore, graffiti exists and persists to the point that there are "permitted walls" to bear their marks:
A Short History of Singapore's Graffiti Movement
Graffiti serves many purposes that exist on a spectrum of human expression, from ***-ugly tagging and marking gang territory to artistic expression and legitimately beautiful murals. To my knowledge, places that support and promote muralists to adorn city walls with art suffer from less of the ugly kind of graffiti that is a blight on the landscape and makes the place look like a dump because it's full of a bunch of fools trying to express themselves, to mark that for a brief moment, they were there and made their mark.
In some places, that's resulted in a super organic lasagna of different artist contributions, like Valparaiso in Chile
My hometown does an annual event called
Wide Open Walls, which sponsors murals throughout the city, adding ambience and perceived value. Public art is good and we should commit more resources to arts education and guiding people to want to make their world a better place... instead of just making their mark and making it look like, well...
As for the bamboo forest, it's a shame that such lovely plants were harmed and subsequently had to be removed. I imagine it's another victim of overtourism, stuff like this hits a critical mass and it almost becomes a dare to the next visitor to leave their mark too; it really is best to remove the affected bamboo or the problem only becomes worse.
These kinds of things seem cheeky or cute to the people who are trying to impress their friends, or show their love for each other by locking a lock onto a bridge... until they have to be cut off because they are putting too much stress on the structure
The trend affects bridges throughout Europe and in some places in the U.S., too
www.smithsonianmag.com
influence is strong so youth tag everywhere and councils can't afford to clean it up.
