Stepping out for a walk in any major city means being bombarded by images and words all with one aim: to get you to want something bad enough to buy it. Call it visual pollution. That’s what the mayor of São Paulo calls billboards and he feels so strongly about it that he made his city the first city outside of the communist world to put into effect a near-complete ban on outdoor advertising. The ban is part of the city’s “Lei Cidade Limpa” or Clean City Law .

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.

Wow! I can’t even imagine this here in NYC. See a video story about the ban after the jump.

Not surprisingly advertisers and the companies that represent them aren’t too happy with the ban.

One sore loser in the battle was Clear Channel Communications. Having recently entered the Brazilian market, the corporation was purchasing a Brazilian subsidiary as well as the rights to a large share of the city’s billboard market. Weeks before the ban took effect, Clear Channel launched a counter-campaign in support of outdoor ads, with desperate slogans that failed to resonate with the masses: “There’s a new movie on all the billboards — what billboards? Outdoor media is culture.”

I really commend the city for doing this , now if only then could get on that pesky violence problem.

Via / AlterNet