
São Paulo’s Outdoor Advertising Ban (2016) - anoncow
https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secrets-sao-paulo-uncovered-outdoor-advertising-ban/
======
zaroth
Several comments from people who live there, all strongly condemning the
measure for various unintended side-effects, all downvoted to oblivion.

Whether it’s encouraging graffiti, removing important light sources which the
city did not pay to replace, destroying culturally significant displays, or
promoting sterilized monotony in the surroundings, it seems there are several
good reasons why outright banning of advertisements might not be the utopian
vision some claim it to be.

Being surprised to learn about viewpoints which contradict the popular
narrative is the best you can hope for from a comment section, if the critique
is offered in good faith.

~~~
ufo
I think it is worth mentioning that in São Paulo people tend to use the word
"grafite" for artful murals and drawings and "pixação" for the stuff that is
seen as vandalism. (there are some grey areas but that is the jist of it)

~~~
personlurking
One of those grey areas is that there's a large portion of people who do
pixação that see their art as an art form.

As an aside, I remember a short Brazilian documentary on São Paulo's "reverse
graffiti" (doing a drawing or mural by skillfully removing dirt from a dirty
wall, so that the white spaces create an image) where the police detained the
artist doing it, despite the fact he was literally cleaning the wall.

~~~
fiatjaf
I could see homicide as an art form and it would still be wrong.

------
spodek
I fantasize about American cities doing this. Ads don't make Times Square
attractive. They make it wretched. I'd love to see the transformation like the
London's pictured in the article.

> _the city would not only lose revenue from absent ads_

The money would have mostly come from residents, with a bunch of it going to
the advertisers, who advertise to increase profits, away from the city. I
would see the city _gain_ money.

I've seen plenty of billboards for soda and junk food, rarely if ever for
broccoli. I imagine the change improved people's health and local farmers'
lives.

~~~
PauloManrique
The change made our lives worse, as due to lack of proper light, several
streets became too dark and violence increased. And no, nothing change about
the way we eat.

~~~
mixmastamyk
That's the city's responsibility.

~~~
barbecue_sauce
A responsibility they are apparently not taking seriously.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Still no reason to support ugly advertising.

------
crazygringo
I had always dreamed about a city without advertising, and couldn't wait to
visit São Paulo. And when I did, I was completely shocked to discover... I
hated it.

Until you experience a lack of advertising, it's hard to imagine quite how
gray and boring and non-vibrant a city looks without it. Turns out billboards
and panels full of dramatic movies and TV shows, beautiful smiling faces
selling makeup and phones... actually add a lot of character to a city and
make it feel like things are happening and going on.

Imagine if books no longer had graphic covers anymore, just all solid gray and
beige and black covers, and you walked into a bookstore. It feels kind of like
that.

If you're going to get rid of advertising, at a minimum you've got to replace
it with something -- like a _lot_ of murals, like murals _everywhere_. (The
Bushwick neighborhood of NYC has some areas full of street art, which works
pretty well.)

~~~
simonebrunozzi
Go to my hometown, Assisi [0], which is roughly 2,400 years old. A village of
~5,000 people sitting on a hill. Home of Saint Francis of Assisi. Walk around.
There's almost no advertising, and yet, it's so beautiful to walk there. It's
how a city is supposed to be.

The fact is, Sao Paulo is a brutalist city, not a beautiful one. I suggest you
don't confuse the two. Of course you hated Sao Paulo. It's skyscrapers, it's
car-centric, it's ugly.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisi)

~~~
hailwren
I think the point is that if you were to scale Assisi up to ~20m, with a
similar population density as Sao Paulo, it would still be ugly. It's a
problem of population density.

~~~
ido
It's a problem of poverty & investment - Vienna or Zurich are not that
drastically sparser than Sao Paulo & are for the most part beautiful cities.

------
ufo
I'm surprised by all the naysayers popping up in this comment thread. Back
when I still lived in São Paulo I remember that the Cidade Limpa law was
extremely, almost universally popular.

~~~
whatever_dude
It was.

I worked in advertisement and still can't ignore how terrible the city was
with rampant billboards. Attempting to regulate it was not having any effect
thanks to easy ways the law could be circumvented by the rich and (legally)
powerful.

Banning them outright was a breath of fresh air.

------
deogeo
A shining example showing that the flood of advertising is not unstoppable.
Some US states have also limited it:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard#Laws_limiting_billbo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard#Laws_limiting_billboards)

Hopefully more will follow.

------
ulzeraj
Paulista here. This clean city law or wathever is translated into destroyed
our beautiful Japanese neighborhood (“Bairro da Liberdade”). Besides we are in
dire need of economic freedom therefore this is just another hassle among 1000
regulations we have to follow to open up a simple bakery or emporium.

I’d rather have our cheerful city back than this trashy version of dusty
“there was a banner here 2 years ago” marks all over the place.

~~~
kinow
Paulistano here too, and nikkei (so pretty much every weekend went to
liberdade and sao joaquim).

I find it easier to walk around Sao Paulo now. And Liberdade is still a
special place with the asian lanterns in the lamp posts, the Bradesco
building, and there are stores with Noren and signs.

Only difference is that the signs are now proportional to the store facade.

And we still have grafitti that helps to keep the city interesting, as well as
our Portuguese stone pavement and other little things that make Sao Paulo
beautiful even without all the billboards and ads.

~~~
deogeo
> beautiful even without all the billboards and ads.

Rarely do I hear the absence of ads framed as a challenge to beauty. So
rarely, it only happened twice - your post, and the post you replied to.

~~~
notatoad
people often think that what they're used to is beautiful. If you lived
somewhere your whole life and all of a sudden it changed drastically, it's
pretty easy to see how the old way could be thought of as beauty.

------
ApolloFortyNine
In my opinion not allowing the business to even have their name on their
building is a step too far. Removing the billboards sticking out perpendicular
to the road looks much better, but this picture that doesn't even have the
name of the store on it seems awful [1]. It would be interesting to see
numbers for how this affected businesses, especially if those businesses
tended to be ones that relied on advertising (food especially).

Forcing people to give directions like "look for the big green building next
to the blue building" doesn't seem like a positive to me.

[1]
[https://99percentinvisible.org/app/uploads/2016/04/signage-b...](https://99percentinvisible.org/app/uploads/2016/04/signage-
before-after.jpg)

~~~
ufo
Business signs are still allowed. The only thing the law does to them is
stipulate how big they can be.

For storefronts less than 10m, there can be a single sign of at most 1.5m².

For storefronts from 10m to 100m, there can be a single sign of up to 4m².

For storefronts above 100m, there can be two signs, each up to 10m², placed at
least 40m apart.

~~~
mantap
It seems that this law is a good idea executed with an unwarranted degree of
severity. I've never in my life heard someone complain that shop signs are too
big (it's the small ones that block the street that people hate). The
advertising that should be banned is that which provides little value except
to the advertisers, such as billboards.

~~~
ufo
Limiting the shop signs was a good thing too. Those big boxy signs were very
ugly. Not only did they block the buildinv facade but they wre built out of
cheap materials that would fade with time.

[https://99percentinvisible.org/app/uploads/2016/04/signage-b...](https://99percentinvisible.org/app/uploads/2016/04/signage-
before-after.jpg)

Before the law, every shop needed their sign to be as big as possible to stand
out in the mess. Now that all the signs are smaller it is not a probkem
anymore.

------
PauloManrique
I live in São Paulo. This initiative was and still is terrible, as propaganda
not only works as... propaganda, but also as sources of light during nights.

Several streets became way too dark, and violence increased. Also, our
Paulista Avenue used to look a bit like Times Square, but now it's just a dead
street as the others.

All of this just because a politician got mad after seeing a outdoor featuring
a couple in underwear (it was a panties ad).

~~~
whatever_dude
Your message is full of allegations without citations and is one of the most
intellectually dishonest comments I've seen in the subject.

Lights do not stop crime in the way you're saying. I've been robbed twice in
well lit locations. And a tiny percentage of those billboards were lit. This
whole point sounds like reaching at straws without any logic behind it.

Avenida Paulista never looked like Times Square. Thankfully, because Times
Square is a halogen light hellscape only tourists can stand and for little
amounts of time at that. Paulista looks great, and dare I say better than it
could have ever looked had it had huge billboards blocking the little sky one
can see.

This was NOT a politician decision on a whim. Come on. That makes me doubt
you've ever lived in São Paulo. This debate was raging for years and only came
to fruition after the inability of regulation to have any effect on rampant
illegal advertising covering more and more of the sky.

~~~
iamthirsty
> Your message is full of allegations without citations and is one of the most
> intellectually dishonest comments I've seen in the subject.

> I've been robbed twice in well lit locations. And a tiny percentage of those
> billboards were lit. This whole point sounds like reaching at straws without
> any logic behind it.

The irony of this comment is something I hope the author themselves
recognizes.

------
mc32
I’m not sure I favor this. Clean buildings can look nice, but they also look a
bit sterile.

I’m for removing the T bar signs. Imagine Tokyo without the signs and neon.

There has to be a workable medium where there is some signage without it
becoming obtrusive and garish.

~~~
kissickas
What are T bar signs? A Google Images search yields equivocal results.

~~~
mc32
Sorry outdoor billboards typically mounted on T bar structures.

------
dakial1
I live in Sao Paulo and the outdoor ban law now is being "ignored" since it
seems not to be enforced anymore. Also, commercial buildings have found
loopholes, like leaving huge outdoors and Digital Signage a little behind
glass windows to say it is "inside the store".

------
mci
Fun fact: the city of Krakow banned any signboards protruding perpendicular to
the walls back in 1892 [1]. Although the ban has never been formally lifted,
it got forgotten after 1918. Now the entire city including the old town is
cluttered with them.

[1]
[https://jbc.bj.uj.edu.pl/dlibra/publication/136678/edition/1...](https://jbc.bj.uj.edu.pl/dlibra/publication/136678/edition/128890/content)
— page 20 (26).

------
jopx
There's a problem that maybe is related to this law, but the article haven't
said anything about it. The increase of flyer distribution around the city. In
the last years basically everywhere you go someone will stop you to give some
flyers, paper that usually people will just throw in the streets and increase
the pollution.

------
GhostVII
From the pictures, it seems like this ban lead to people removing signage from
buildings entirely, which I think is pretty inconvenient. When I'm walking
down the street, it is helpful to know what stores I am walking past, and have
some information about them (ex. the phone number on Ribnits in the before
picture).

I think a better middle ground is to ban advertising that is not related to
the structure the ad is on - that would get rid of a lot of the clutter
created by billboards and third-party ads on things like bus stops, while
still allowing stores to advertise themselves and what they do to people
walking by.

------
hanniabu
The streets without all those signs look much more pleasant

~~~
trilila
Assuming one might feel safe enough to walk on them.

~~~
benj111
Because of loss of light from the signs?

By the same token sign removal should open up the street potentially making it
feel safer.

~~~
meristem
Not loss of light. Just extra violence due to economic/social upheaval I'd
say.

------
goldcd
Slightly OT - but
[https://99percentinvisible.org/](https://99percentinvisible.org/) is a
_really_ great podcast series.

I believe the notional theme is 'design' (and good design being 99% invisible)
- but it's a wonderful mish-mash of stuff that's always interesting, all
covered by the exceptional dulcet tones of "Roman Mars"

------
swang
i forgot sao paulo was the city with no advertising until after i visited..

but the most vivid memory i had in sao paulo was when we were in the subway
and as we're exiting the subway my friend had his phone stolen while his hand
was in his pocket touching his phone. my friend was upset and had to take time
out of our vacation to call his banks and cancel his cards, etc.. but i was
actually pretty impressed how they pulled it off (definitely a gang, and most
likely everyone around us was in on it). the city seemed fine otherwise.

actually the other memory i had while in sao paulo/brazil was lots of people
wanting to take pictures with four asian dudes? anyone in brazil shed light on
this? i know there is a big japanese community in brazil so i'm curious what
their curiosity was with us.

------
argd678
How do you find the store or restaurant you’re looking for?

~~~
headsoup
Look at the business signage, rather than dig for it through all the
advertising plastered around? Or use maps...

~~~
argd678
The pictures in the article show the business sings were removed as far as I
can tell.

~~~
headsoup
I thought that too, but going by the comments here it appears business signage
is fine within the rules set

------
muxator
To put this in context: together with the advertising clutter, a lot of
artistic graffitis were taken down in the process.

~~~
Mountain_Skies
If there's one thing you can be assured of, it's that removed graffiti will be
replaced by new graffiti. Only through prolonged removal each time it
reappears do the new attempts stop (or at least get reduced to a trickle).

------
dba7dba
All of Hawaii does not allow any outdoor advertising. And I think it is
wonderful.

City Of Los Angeles has regulations on different aspects billboards. BUT, city
has no idea idea how many even exist.

------
Tade0
I grew up in Poland, which experienced explosive capitalism during the 90s and
with it a surge of banners, billboards and ads.

Most of them done on the cheap and in bad taste - optimised to draw attention.

Fortunately at least in some cities regulations followed and most of that
clutter was removed during the first years of the XXI century.

Only bad second order effect I experienced are people employed to lure you
into some places like strip clubs etc.

My take is that banners should be allowed as long as there's a style guide
issued by the city which they would have to follow.

Italy is doing great in this regard - the worst I saw there were outdoor photo
prints of menus which aren't nearly as bad as large posters in safety-vest
yellow I saw back home.

------
whatever_dude
(2016)

