Sign, Sign, Nowhere a Sign
Sao Paulo Brazil has implemented a ban on outdoor advertising, calling it "visual pollution."
"In 2007, the world's fourth-largest metropolis and Brazil's most important city, São Paulo, became the first city outside of the communist world to put into effect a radical, near-complete ban on outdoor advertising. Known on one hand for being the country's slick commercial capital and on the other for its extreme gang violence and crushing poverty, São Paulo's "Lei Cidade Limpa" or Clean City Law was an unexpected success, owing largely to the singular determination of the city's conservative mayor, Gilberto Kassab.
As the driving force behind the measure, mayor Kassab quelled the rebellion from the advertising industry with the help of key allies amongst the city's elite. On many occasions, Kassab made the point that he has nothing against advertising in and of itself, but rather with its excess. He explained, "The Clean City Law came from a necessity to combat pollution ... pollution of water, sound, air, and the visual. We decided that we should start combating pollution with the most conspicuous sector -- visual pollution."
Since then, billboards, outdoor video screens and ads on buses have been eliminated at breakneck speed. Even pamphleteering in public spaces has been made illegal, and strict new regulations have drastically reduced the allowable size of storefront signage. Nearly $8 million in fines were issued to cleanse São Paulo of the blight on its landscape.
Although legal challenges from businesses have left a handful of billboards standing, the city, now stripped of its 15,000 billboards, resembles a battlefield strewn with blank marquees, partially torn-down frames and hastily painted-over storefront facades. While it's unclear whether this cleanup can be replicated in other cities around the world, it has so far been a success in São Paulo: surveys indicate that the measure is extremely popular with the city's residents, with more than 70 percent approval.
Though materialism and consumerism, along with gang violence will continue to pollute the city of São Paulo, these human dramas may at least begin to unfold against a more pleasant visual backdrop."
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Priorities?
Anyone who thinks capitalism isn't the best system for answering the fundamental economic questions hasn't been paying attention these last 50 years or so.
That aside, I can't imagine no signs at all. "Is that blue building a bank, a coffee shop, or the morgue?" Entire buildings garishly painted to differentiate themselves? How stupid is that?
Yes priorities.
I didn't say its not a great system, I just said it doesn't need your help defending itself. What makes capitalism so great is its flexibility and response to challenges. Which is why supposed free market capitalists are so misguided. Every time businesses have been challenged by regulations they emerge stronger and more capable to produce the goods that people want with less negative impacts. But they cry all the way up until those regulations are passed, then adapt perfectly. You can see that with CAFE standards right now. American car companies are crying that its just not fair, meanwhile Toyota responds to the challenge and wins the capitalist race. The crying is called rent-seeking behavior and it is very un-capitalistic.
By the way there are also fundamental non-economic questions in the world, which seems to escape a lot of people's attention these days. And if you had read the article instead of jumping to conclusions you would have seen that the ban was predominantly on advertising signs, not identification signs. The second category is just tightly regulated. People seem to forget that regulations are not passed in a vacuum they are passed in response to societal forces. And your idea doesn't sound stupid at all it sounds quite interesting I wish you the best of luck with it.
Yet another step
In the assault on capitalism. This is just idiocy.
Warped priorities
Capitalism does just fine on its own, its a sense of humanity that needs defending from assaults.
Warped advertising.
its a sense of humanity that needs defending from assaults.
Good point. Who wants to be assaulted by the pitchman's call every time you turn your head?
If capitalism can't adjust -- and stop whining at every turn -- maybe it's not the best system to go with. As the article said: On many occasions, Kassab made the point that he has nothing against advertising in and of itself, but rather with its excess. Assault indeed.
I think that I shall never see
a billboard as lovely as a tree.
Indeed, unless the billboards fall
I shall never see a tree at all. -- Ogden Nash
Best,
D
Here's a neon sign for you
Apparently you didn't notice this article originated with NPR. Since it lacks the usual commerical advertising base, it wasn't too subtle with the propaganda this time.
Maybe capitalism isn't the best system? Actually , Brazil has mixed capitalist system (like ours) and capitalism itself adjusts itself better than say its opposite, communism. The mayor said they would allow outdoor advertising in specific zones so the pitchman will be back just not everywhere you turn but not so fast. The interviewer failed to ask the the advertisers' what alternative means of advertising they were going use to justify corporate spending budgeted for advertising. Less billboards probably mean more money poured into TV, newspapers or radio. That's how the market adjusts.
Mixed Capitalist System
Virtually everyone believes that the best economic system is a mixed capitalist system - a market economy with some government regulation and with some government action to fill the gaps left by the market (such as police and fire protection).
Virtually no one believes there should be no regulation. For example, no one believes that there should not be clean water laws and that industry should be able to dump their toxic wastes in the water supply.
Virtually no one believes there should be a planned economy, as the communists believed a few decades ago, since the market has proven to be much more efficient.
So we are actually talking about more regulation or less regulation. In this case, we clearly do need more - at least, if we want attractive cities to live in.
Charles Siegel
ok, but..
why do you think the market can not create "attractive" places. Is it not zoning and overzealous traffic engineers that has forced the creation of mundane places? In this case, I understand they are specifically talking about signs/billboards, but in general, I think the market can create great places. It needs to be permitted at the least and have an incentive at best. Although, to some extent, that incentive is already there.
On the rest, I agree, but there is a lot of grey area with regard to how much regulation.
The Market And Attractive Places
CP: As you say, I was just talking about billboards and signs in my last post.
But I think the same is true more generally: we need a combination of the market and regulation to create attractive places. In the nineteenth century and before, the market created attractive places, but now externalities have become too important.
For example, on any pedestrian-oriented main street, a developer could attact more customers by building shopping with the parking lot in front. This is better for that one business, which will pull in lots of the people driving by, but is worse for the pedestrian feel and attractiveness of the street as a whole. Of course, this was not an issue in the nineteenth century and before.
Pure planning tends to create sterile housing projects, and the pure market tends to create strip malls. Combine the right amount of regulation and lots of freedom for individual developers within that framework of regulation, and you can get attractive and interesting places.
Charles Siegel