Adblocking – the global cities clearing streets of advertising to promote human and environmental health

• “Some unexpected consequences of the ban included the city painting over murals by the world famous Sao Paulo artists Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo, who were simultaneously showing at London’s Tate Gallery – an act that sparked outrage, but also a constructive discussion about the value of street art.” ⤴️
• “to combat cultures of overconsumption, and the human and environmental costs they impose, cities around the world are pioneering initiatives to reduce what is being called the ‘visual pollution’ of excessive advertising.” ⤴️
• “On 1st January, 2007, Brazil’s biggest city, São Paulo, led by the city’s populist mayor, Gilberto Kassab, introduced the Clean City Law. The result was a near-total ban affecting billboards, digital signs and advertising on buses. Despite the threat to income for the city from advertising revenue, the ban was successfully enforced and changed the face of this huge metropolis, reducing the amount of external lighting and forcing the city to acknowledge the reality beneath.” ⤴️
• “Many US states strongly control public advertising and four have banned billboards completely. In Paris, rules were introduced to reduce advertising on the city’s streets by 30 per cent and cap the size of hoardings. Moreover, no adverts are allowed within 50 metres of school gates. The Indian city of Chennai banned billboard advertising completely, and Grenoble in France recently banned commercial advertising in public places in the city’s streets, to enhance opportunities for non-commercial expression. Several hundred advertising signs were replaced by tree planting and community noticeboards.” ⤴️
• “In 2007, the municipal government of Beijing began reducing ads by targeting billboards for luxury housing. “Many use exaggerated terms that encourage luxury and self-indulgence which are beyond the reach of low-income groups and are therefore not conducive to harmony in the capital,” the city’s mayor, Wang Qishan, told The Wall Street Journal.” ⤴️
• ““It’s not simply greenhouse gases that cause climate change—it’s our consumer lifestyle that causes the greenhouse gases that cause climate change,”” ⤴️
• “without the billboards, some of the symptoms of various social problems – homelessness and gangs, for example – became much more obvious and were then next on the list for reform. For the first time, many residents were able to see long-standing favelas, or slum-like neighborhoods, that previously had been blocked from view by billboards.” ⤴️
• “It is also interesting as an illustration of the power of big brands and how they try to circumvent such bans, often with the support of business or city officials concerned about revenue loss.” ⤴️
• “children need protecting from the pressures of consumerism. The British Parliament passed legislation in 1874 intended to protect children from the efforts of merchants to induce them to buy products and assume debt. Some places still regulate strongly against advertising to children: Sweden, Norway and Quebec completely bar marketing to children under the age of 12.” ⤴️
• “big brands have used graffiti sponsorship and other creative methods to ensure their products are visible to people on the street. Although the ban remains in place, advertising could return through the installation of information screens, interactive bus stop signs, and digital clock displays, many of which could accommodate advertising.” ⤴️
• “consider the impact of advertising on children, who are even less able to filter out its influence. Street advertising cannot be turned off or otherwise removed from a child’s environment.” ⤴️
• “the values of materialism and consumerism – and the idea that people are consumers first and citizens second – make us less satisfied with our lives and less able to reduce our consumption. Commercial advertising tends to push the values of materialism, linked to patterns of related overconsumption which display self-reinforcing and negative dynamics.” ⤴️
• “Some were concerned the city would not only lose revenue from absent ads, but would have to actively spend money taking down the resulting ghost town of empty billboards. Other critics were nervous that without the colourful veneer of advertisements, the urban environment might look worse rather than better, unmasked as a gloomy concrete cityscape.” ⤴️
• “Some in the business community warned that less lighting (by billboards and walls) would mean more dangerous streets, while Clear Channel Outdoor, one of the world’s biggest outdoor-advertising companies, sued the city, claiming the ban was unconstitutional.” ⤴️
• “the removal of some large signs allowed people to see into poor squatter areas and previously hidden factories” ⤴️
• “In 2009, Chennai, India banned the erection of billboards, and several US states are billboard-free, including Vermont and Maine since the 1970s, Hawaii since the 1920s, and Alaska since 1998. In 2011, Paris set out plans to reduce the number of ad hoardings by a third.” ⤴️
• “A campaign to declutter streets by removing unnecessary signs and other obstacles started in London’s Kensington as an initiative by one innovative and determined politician, who chaired the relevant committee. It has since begun to spread around the UK with the support of organisations like Living Streets.” ⤴️
• “The latest and perhaps boldest attempt to un-brand public space comes from Grenoble, France, which, in 2014, became the first city in Europe to ban commercial street advertising. The mayor’s office stated that it was “taking the choice of freeing public space in Grenoble from advertising to develop areas for public expression” and replaced 326 advertising signs with community noticeboards and trees.” ⤴️