The Art of Belonging: How Public Art and Murals Transform Communities

Across cities from Philadelphia to Boise, murals have become civic landmarks that record what history books omit. They restore pride to neglected neighborhoods, strengthen public connection, and demonstrate that beauty can be both a form of resistance and a catalyst for renewal. Supported by local governments, nonprofits, and artists working alongside residents, public art projects demonstrate how creativity can transform public space into shared identity.

A mural does not ask permission to be seen. It asserts itself in color and form, often on a surface that once carried nothing but decay or disregard. Across cities and small towns alike, these walls have become public records of who we are and what we value when we are willing to make beauty visible.

Public art changes the temperature of a place. You can measure the difference not only in light and color but in how people move through it. Pedestrians linger longer. Conversations begin where they once didn’t. The tone of a neighborhood shifts, not through commerce or policing, but through the simple act of seeing oneself reflected in a shared space.

In Philadelphia, the Mural Arts Program has transformed over 4,000 walls since its founding in the 1980s, transforming an anti-graffiti initiative into the country’s largest public art project. What began as an effort to erase has become a movement to reveal the strength and humanity that already existed in its neighborhoods. In Los Angeles, Judith Baca’s The Great Wall of Los Angeles stretches half a mile through the San Fernando Valley, chronicling five centuries of marginalized history that textbooks too often omit. In Chicago’s Pilsen district, murals by artists like Hector Duarte and Francisco Mendoza speak in color where language once divided, embedding immigrant narratives directly into the city’s visual identity.

In Boise, Idaho, that same impulse toward transformation has taken root in an alley once overlooked by everyone except the graffiti writers who claimed it as canvas. Freak Alley began as an informal stretch of murals between Eighth and Ninth Streets, a cluster of back walls, dumpsters, and loading doors turned into an outdoor gallery. What started as a few artists painting without permission has now evolved into one of the largest open-air mural spaces in the Northwest, drawing visitors year-round. The work shifts constantly with new layers of paint, texture, and voice documenting the city’s creative pulse. Tourists photograph it, but locals recognize it as a testament to Boise’s transformation from a provincial outpost to a cultural crossroads. The walls themselves tell the story, from abstract geometries to political commentary to the bold typography of artists who paint between coffee deliveries and street closures.

Beyond downtown, murals have crept outward onto brewery facades, underpasses, and garden walls in the city’s industrial edges and neighborhoods. The Garden City Placemaking Fund has become a driving force in that expansion. What began as a local grant initiative to connect artists with underutilized spaces has evolved into a regional model for civic art. The fund commissions works that merge public utility with aesthetic impact, painting crosswalks, restoring alleyways, and transforming blank surfaces into wayfinding landmarks. Its success has caught the attention of other mid-sized cities across the Mountain West, each facing the same question Boise once did.

How do we foster identity without losing authenticity?

Garden City’s current projects extend beyond Idaho, partnering with communities in Oregon, Montana, and Utah to replicate what worked—a blend of artist autonomy, community input, and local business sponsorship that sustains art as part of daily life rather than a temporary beautification effort.

These works have become civic fixtures, as vital to a city’s identity as its courthouses, libraries, or public squares. They record what official archives overlook and remind residents that collective memory is not confined to plaques or documents. Their creation depends on more than artistic ambition—it requires civic will. City planners, nonprofit organizations, and local arts councils often provide the scaffolding that makes these murals possible, helping artists secure funding, navigate permits, and gain access to public walls. Without that infrastructure, many projects would never move beyond sketches or proposals. Public art thrives when municipalities and community foundations recognize that beauty is not an afterthought of urban design, but a public service in its own right.

Art does what policy rarely can. It restores dignity to forgotten corners. It draws attention without spectacle. When a mural rises in a neighborhood long dismissed as blighted, it does not erase hardship; rather, it reframes it. It declares that the people who live there are seen, that their environment is worth the labor of color and care. These collaborations between artists and civic partners become acts of restoration, reimagining not only walls but the social fabric that surrounds them.

Studies in environmental psychology continue to validate what artists have understood intuitively: the visual presence of art in shared spaces changes how people feel, think, and behave. Research from the University of London found that viewing art can trigger the same neurological reward centers as experiencing love or joy, releasing dopamine and lowering cortisol levels associated with stress. A 2019 study published in Frontiers in Psychology showed that exposure to murals and street art increased feelings of belonging and civic trust, particularly in areas previously associated with neglect or economic decline. When color and form enter the public realm, they alter the emotional architecture of a place. Streets feel safer. People walk more. Crime rates drop. Residents report stronger attachment to their neighborhoods and a renewed sense of collective ownership.

Still, the data only captures a portion of the truth. The deeper impact lies in how murals give shape to lived experience. They translate the intangible, whether memory, grief, or pride, into something visible. They create continuity in communities where redevelopment often erases history. A painted wall can hold what a city archive cannot: the texture of a story, the rhythm of a language, the faces of those rarely commemorated.

In that way, public art serves a function not unlike literature. Both give voice to what is otherwise suppressed or ignored. Around the world, judges presiding over banned book cases have cited this very principle and the right of communities to see themselves reflected in difficult, even uncomfortable narratives. When Maus was defended in U.S. courtrooms, when The Bluest Eye or Persepolis were challenged and then reinstated in schools, rulings often underscored the social necessity of art that confronts rather than conceals. These decisions recognize that murals express that representation is not a luxury, but a safeguard. To be seen, even through pain, is to be acknowledged as part of the collective record. Public art, like contested literature, gives shape to experience in a way that invites empathy rather than silence.

The strongest projects begin from within. In Philadelphia, many of the city’s most enduring murals came out of community meetings held in church basements and recreation centers—artists listening before they ever touched a brush. In South Los Angeles, painter Eliseo Art Silva collaborated directly with residents of Historic Filipinotown to design "Gintong Kasaysayan, Gintong Pamana," a sprawling narrative of Filipino migration and resilience that became a landmark because it belonged to the people who inspired it. In Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood, the restoration of the Wall of Respect, originally created in 1967, was led not by a city commission but by residents determined to preserve a visual record of Black achievement. These works endure because they are rooted in the lived memory of those who stand before them. A wall only speaks with authority when the community helps write what it says.

Over time, these walls alter how cities are read. Wynwood in Miami was once an industrial warehouse district; its transformation into one of the most visited art destinations in the country began with murals painted on concrete and corrugated metal. In Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward, the Krog Street Tunnel evolved from a graffiti-covered pass-through into a constantly changing gallery that now anchors a thriving arts corridor. These places prove that art can shift perception more effectively than development plans or marketing campaigns. Commerce follows culture because culture signals care and concern. A neighborhood that paints its walls declares itself visible, and visibility attracts attention, investment, and, most importantly, respect.

Ultimately, the power of public art rests in its reach and recognition. Anyone can stand before a mural without a fee or invitation and see a piece of themselves within it. A mother walking home from work, a child on a bike, a passerby with no ties to the neighborhood—all share the same moment of recognition. Public art dissolves hierarchies and restores equality between the artist and the audience, the resident and the stranger. When a wall speaks, it speaks for everyone. It says with quiet certainty that this place matters.