The city that "cleaned up it's act" by passing a law that banned all public advertising (Cidade Limpa). And the mayor is no leftist revolutionary! It will be interesting to follow up on this and see how it develops.
On January 1st, 2007, a funny thing happened in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The city of approximately eleven million people, South America's largest, awoke to find a ban on public advertising. Every billboard, every neon sign, every bus kiosk ad and even the Goodyear blimp were suddenly illegal.
The ban on what the mayor calls "visual pollution" was the culmination of a long battle between the city's politicians and the advertising industry, which had blanketed Brazil's economic capital with all manner of billboards, both legal and illegal. Within months, the city has gone from a Blade Runner-like vision of the future to a reclaimed past. More...
Apparently Mr. Kassab (the mayor of Sao Paulo) is planning to introduce more street furniture with advertising in the future.
