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What If We Made Advertising Illegal?
(simone.org)
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this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2025
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Mildly Interesting
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Sao Paolo did this in 2006.
Under the cult of the "Invisible Hand of the Free Market", the prevailing ideology of neoclassical economics and the modern global economy, advertising is not necessary. Why should a firm have to convince me to buy anything if the market dictates prices and the flow of commodities? Yet here we are.
How did it go? Why did they stop it?
As far as I can tell, they didn't stop it - outdoor advertising is still banned there. It was hard finding recent online information about it though. The most recent references I found were a two-year-old discussion on Hacker News and a 2022 article from the BBC which mentions São Paulo's ban and says that Grenoble in France has something similar.
Thank you for the links. I've been there recently, and everything felt cold and gray. I could not really understand why, since all of Brazil feels so charming, green and vivid. Maybe your argument explains a part of it: since there is no advertising, there aren't many colors on the streets (it might've been my impression, tho').
that's interesting that you mention that - never been there myself or anything, but I did come across reports that the city authorities had relaxed rules on large murals to make up for the lack of advertising, and there's certainly a lot of pictures of some pretty impressive artworks!
There are! And a lot too!
The thing is: São Paulo is a city made mostly to walk. Going by car is a nightmare, and public transportation (the metro) is quite good. The center of it all, the most iconic place, the "avenida paulista" is quite iconic, but full of gray. The main attraction are the buildings, which are huge. I'd say most of them are banks. And the more you go around, the more you feel the need of green places.
It's a big city, there are some huge murals and street art, but it feels cold. As if it was put there just to check a mark on a "good city needs this" list, but not as natural evolution of the city.
The things I've felt there:
I'm grateful to you for digging those up.