Five years ago, the 7th most populous city in the world passed the Clean City Law. Every billboard, poster and bus ad was removed to combat 'visual pollution'. Did the city collapse overnight? Was business ruined? Did people not know what to buy anymore?!! Er...no. São Paulo couldn't be happier.
Read the full story here
Surely time to take stock of the damage this visual pollution does to our quality of life...starting at the Harringay Bridge, perhaps?
Tags for Forum Posts: advertising, billboards
No, Liz, I won't be wandering about - just striding purposefully. And no, not complaining about petty things while shrugging my shoulders about what others may think greater or more obvious. Just attempting what is possible. Attention seems to have shifted to the silliness of protecting lamp-posts rather than the tree-trunks I mentioned first - saplings, rather, struggling to make a life for themselves on Wightman. But it's my blasphemy in mentioning cats in a less than reverential tone that's the sticking point - rather than my suspected worship of lamp-posts or difficulties with the usual tolerance of flyposting illegality
Miaow!
Liz wrote: Maybe I didn't want to see the original point of this thread lost in a digression about fly posting.
It was that pesky StephenBln again .. sorry
Liz wrote: Are we so blinded by the mantra of business above all else that we don't think we have a right to complain if we lose sight of our buildings under giant hoardings that flog us pointless consumer goods?
Yes, I seriously think you are -
It's like the argument litterers use. If they didn't drop litter then their uncle wouldn't have a job. If we didn't allow the garish, unsightly urban advertising that we do then someone's cousin would be out of a job...
Anyway, I personally advocate criminal damage to offensive advertising. Nothing else will work.
But plainly, John, something did work in São Paulo. And Zena and I saw no large billboards in downtown Vancouver in a brief visit in 2004. Nor in central Paris.
Back in the 1970s I knew someone who explained how une intervention on a billboard subverted both advertising and capitalism. (Though it seemed to me that his clever and witty additions drew more attention to them.)
Criminal damage? Let's suppose, John, that following the riots, someone were to take your advice. Would you pay their fine? Or visit them in prison? And help them get a job after they come out with a criminal record?
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