Signs in cities: the semiotic construction of urban landscapes

Papen, Uta (2013) Signs in cities: the semiotic construction of urban landscapes. Journal of Visual Culture. (Submitted)

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Abstract

Shops signs, advertising billboards and graffiti tags are a common sight in cities. Many buildings are covered in commercial signs and advertising billboards whereas the walls of others may be filled with graffiti tags and protest slogans. In the present article I investigate the role of multimodal texts, materially manifested on buildings, in house entrances, on lampposts and other physical spaces, in shaping a city’s image, its culture and reputation. Taking as an example a neighbourhood of Berlin, where I interviewed shop owners, community activists and street artists, I suggest that the ‘spatial semiotics‘ (Krase and Shortness 2011: 371) of urban landscapes are part of what marks them as specific cultural places, indexing particular identities and (contested) ideas about the city and its residents.

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