São Paulo has passed a “Clean City” law that will ban outdoor advertising — billboards, neon signs and electronic panels. I wonder what a future Seoul would look like if the city banned even half of the eye-sore up at this moment?
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12 Comments
If you banned all the billboards, neon signs and electronic panels in Seoul, there would be no color left in the city. All that would be left is a bunch of colorless, featureless buildings……..
While driving on the Kangbyun Buk-ro yesterday I noticed that now even the highway mile markers are sponsored by advertisers!
Enforcing the existing rules on the placement and size of business signs would be a beginning, but that’s been tried before with little results. Remember how they tried to clear out the sidewalks of illegal advertising shortly before the World Cup? The jerks would come out of their stores to fight with the city workers. Some even had the gall of demanding to be compensated for their loss.
That article is from 2006. If the start date of that law was Jan.1, I wonder what the city looks like now that almost four months have passed.
I came to Asia for the neon signs. Granted, I can’t sleep anymore, but that only helps Hite stay in the blue.
And to think that when I saw the post title, I thought it was talking about the UN secretary-general…
As LivingnKorea says, this place would be pretty drab without the neon signs to give it a little color.
Kyoto has passed a similar law, but it will be 6 years before we’ll be able to see the real impact:
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/061126/1/4539w.html
Here is a Flickr stream . . .
It could work if city planners actually planned how a city should look. Again, this would take vision, dedication and some kind of aesthetics.
Korea has a similar law, 옥외광고물 등 관리법(Out door Advertisement Control Act).
The constitutionality of some provision was reviewed on thhe basis of Freedom of expression in Constitutional court.
The debate of law is a good and healthy thing but, hey, if I stuck up a long banner on my apartment window that said, in Korean “F**k You All - 10,000 Won”, I wonder just how long my freedom of expression would last.
Constitutional haggling over such a point is only demonstrative of a leadership that is uncommitted to improving the city. I’ve seen that sort of attitude back in the states too.
Meanwhile, check out what the Chinese can do with creating housing developments that modeled after the more scenic cities of Europe.
It only takes money and the will to do it.
Vancouver used to have lots of big, interesting, animated neon signs. I remember them from when I was a kid. There were huge, flashing roof-mounted signs, animated restaurant signs, all kinds of neat stuff. Being driven or taking the bus around the city at night when I was a kid was such treat because of the signs. It was very cool.
At some point, a sign by-law was passed that gradually phased the signs out on the position that they were eyesores. Now, there are virtually no neon signs left. And apart from neon, signs on the outsides of buildings are very tightly regulated. Vancouver has a lot to offer in terms of natural scenery and urban design, but without the signs, the city’s ambience just lacks a certain something.
My 200 won.