Barren or bearable?

No ads? Can it be? Struggling to differentiate legal and illegal signboards, São Paulo has decided to go "all the way" and ban it all.

Quote :

In September last year, the city's populist right-wing mayor, Gilberto Kassab, passed the so-called Clean City laws. Fed up with the "visual pollution" caused by the city's 8,000 billboard sites, many of them erected illegally, Kassab proposed a law banning all outdoor advertising. The skyscraper-sized hoardings that lined the city's streets would be wiped away at a stroke. And it was not just billboards that attracted his wrath: all forms of outdoor advertising were to be prohibited, including ads on taxis, on buses—even shopfronts were to be restricted, their signs limited to 1.5 metres for every 10 metres of frontage. "It is hard in a city of 11 million people to find enough equipment and personnel to determine what is and isn't legal," reasoned Kassab, "so we have decided to go all the way."

Read the whole story here.

What will this do to the city? When I think of Time Square, I cannot help but imagine the expansive adscape that is as much a part of the city as the restaurants and high-rise condos.

Is advertising always an eyesore? Do we put up with it just because it contributes much-needed revenue? If you could, would you cut all advertising from newspapers? Do ads related to a story serve the readership?

What are your thoughts?