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Ads are everywhere — on every corner, in your browser, and even staring you in the face while you're 35,000 feet in the air. There is no escaping them these days, and it pains me to see people plaster an ad anywhere there’s a blank space. It feels like nothing can be done about this ever-present nuisance of ads, but São Paulo had other ideas and in 2006, they passed the Clean City Law to outlaw the use of all outdoor advertisements. Since then Paris removed a third of their outdoor ads, Grenoble has replaced ads with trees, and Vermont, Maine, Hawaii, and Alaska have all gone billboard-free. It just goes to show the change you can make when you think outside the frame.
In September 2006, the mayor of São Paulo passed the so-called “Clean City Law" that outlawed the use of all outdoor advertisements, including on billboards, transit, and in front of stores. Within a year, 15,000 billboards were taken down and store signs had to be shrunk so as not to violate the new law. Outdoor video screens and ads on buses were stripped. Even pamphleteering in public spaces has been made illegal. Nearly $8 million in fines were issued to cleanse São Paulo of the blight on its landscape. Seven years on, the world's fourth-largest metropolis and South America’s most important city remains free of visual clutter and eye sore that plagues the majority of cities around the world.
