A city stripped of advertising. No Posters. No flyers. No ads on buses. No ads on trains. No Adshels, no 48-sheets, no nothing.
It sounds like an Adbusters editorial: an activist's dream. But in S\ufffdo Paulo, Brazil, the dream has become a reality.
In September last year, the city's populist right-wing mayor, Gilberto Kassab, passed the so-called Clean City laws. Fed up with the "visual pollution" caused by the city's 8,000 billboard sites, many of them erected illegally, Kassab proposed a law banning all outdoor advertising. The skyscraper-sized hoardings that lined the city's streets would be wiped away at a stroke. And it was not just billboards that attracted his wrath: all forms of outdoor advertising were to be prohibited, including ads on taxis, on buses\ufffdeven shopfronts were to be restricted, their signs limited to 1.5 metres for every 10 metres of frontage. "It is hard in a city of 11 million people to find enough equipment and personnel to determine what is and isn't legal," reasoned Kassab, "so we have decided to go all the way."
Very interesting and radical idea. Don't know if this is really a good idea or not, but I certainly applaud their willingness to try.
[link|http://www.flickr.com/photos/tonydemarco/sets/72157600075508212/|Flickr]
Some pictures from Sao Paulo. Looks very weird at the moment because a lot of companies have removed the advertising without removing the billboards yet. I think they would be wise to spend some money on some public artwork to fill some of that space. But I think in the end it will be a better looking city.
Jay