If you build it, they will tag

Every morning, Monday through Friday, I weave my way through some messed up city construction.  Seems the powers that be want to work on a main road and the freeway that intersects it.  Fine, I know my way around closed entrance ramps and three-lane roads narrowed to two lanes during the busiest times of day. Part of the construction is very high along the feeder, or side roads, along the freeway.  Newly erected walls, wonderful beige blank surfaces on which to paint whatever it is you want to paint in order to make your mark. I have to wonder what the city was thinking by inviting it all.  It's been about a week since the walls were erected, still the frustrating road blocks are there because the road paving has not been completed, and yet those walls are already colored, tagged, designed, customized. I don't have a problem with street art, I actually like it.  But I do have a problem with gang marks and I have to wonder why a city as sophisticated and aware as Houston is would erect a canvas for what my taxes will surely pay, year after year, to be covered.  Along another freeway in this city, metal grids were erected and climbing ivy planted. Those walls?  Green with nature.  Seems that someone missed the lesson.