São Paulo - A new silent city
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This week I picked up my copy of Creative Review, and for the first time ever, actually read an article from beginning to end. The article was “The Naked City. São Paulo: The city that said no to advertising” by Patrick Burgoyne.
It had me stuck to the toilet seat. São Paulo’s right-wing mayor, Gilberto Kassab, has passed a Clean City law whereby all outdoor advertising has been banned.
The article is accompanied with photographs from Tony de Marco’s Flickr account. They show a new São Paulo. A blank canvas and an advertising graveyard. Skeletons of billboards rise into the sky, revealing buildings and architecture that their adverts had previously concealed. Its quite poetic and beautiful.
And I’ve pulled a common thread here - my previous post about Noisemapping London discussed aural noise pollution, now Kassab has addressed visual noise pollution.
He has calmed the city. Put the public before the private. And got away with it.
Well almost…
The Brazilian Association of Advertisers is calling the new laws “unreal, ineffective and fascist.” What a surprise! Here are the advertisers - the newly repressed - fighting for their rights…
Kassab is perhaps dictating. He is dictating a new law to clean up his city. ‘It is hard in a city of 11 million people to find enough equipment and personnel to determine what is and isn’t legal, so we have decided to go all the way‘.
And go all the way he has! Be he red, blue or purple, Kassab has succeeded in doing what many others would not dare venture. I applaud him. São Paulo has alot to teach the rest of the world.
Nico beat me to this, but thought I’d post it anyway.
