Tuesday, June 19, 2007
São Paulo: White Space Graveyard
by
Try to envision Times Square, Las Vegas or Tokyo without outdoor advertising. While some may consider outdoor promotion as visual pollution, it has become an iconic part of popular art culture in many cities. But what if we decided to outlaw outdoor advertising not only in New York and Vegas but other major American cities like Orlando, Chicago, Seattle, Minneapolis and more. You can get a glimpse of what that scenario would be like in this story at Business Week about the Brazilian city that did just that: São Paulo.
São Paulo’s right-wing mayor, Gilberto Kassab, passed the Clean City laws which means no billboards, flyers, posters, ads on buses, benches or other outdoor advertising can be displayed. If you view the photos in the BW story, it looks like a ghost town. Kinda eerie. There is a giant white space graveyard where the advertising used to be. Personally, it doesn’t leave me wanting to pack my bags for sun and fun in what is billed as Brazil’s most modern and cosmopolitan city.
Although São Paulo’s Clean City laws originated because of a flood of illegal outdoor advertising, the remedy seems an over-reaction. A more common sense approach balancing outdoor advertising with aesthetic concerns seems to have been the Highway Beautification Act that was championed by Lady Bird Johnson and passed in 1965. The intended result of that legislation (although there are many loopholes) was to move billboards off rural roads and restrict them to commercial zones near cities.
In addition, it is important to remember that outdoor advertising often serves a valuable function for travelers helping them find important services and locations when they are in unfamiliar territory. There must be a lot of travelers asking passersby for directions right now in São Paulo. I hope they can speak Portuguese.
