VivirLatino

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.

Read more…