Live data from Hacker News

Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)

amusingplanet.com

111–120 of 428 posts

Re: Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)

#111
post #37

Some additions: Stores also cannot use their full façade for advertising. Branding colors and details are OK, but logos cannot be too large (don't know the exact rule). The law is picky. Some stores cheat by having a glass façade, and using LEDs inside that glass. Like this: https://imgur.com/a/CLdUD1C Since this law was adopted, there's been an increase in full building graffiti, which is not banned. Now 10 years la…

Most of those murals look much worse than advertisements to me. I guess there's less incentive to maintain them.

Re: Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)

#112
post #9

> Seven years on, the world's fourth-largest metropolis and South America’s most important city remains free of visual clutter and eye sore that plagues the majority of cities around the world. Unfortunately it suffers greatly - to a ridiculous level, in some places - from that ugliest kind of grafitti, convoluted "tags" made in single-stroke black ink I'm not sure if that is the case everywhere but in Brazil people…

I kind of love pichação style. It looked really ugly to me at first, but then grew on me as I saw more of it. It feels alien and cryptic and uncomfortable to me as a Westerner. I understand being sick of it if you live there, but as a tourist, it felt special. Local graffiti styles have become so homogenized in the U.S. At one point, script styles were much more local. NY and Philly especially. Eventually, everyone sort of saw and bit off everyone else and it was no longer possibly to tell where a writer was from from their work. São Paulo has a definitely style. Not just the tags, but Batman Alley and the huge public murals. It was the best city I have ever been to for street art.

Re: Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)

#113

As an individual, I'd welcome no advertisements everywhere. I think ads were abused long enough. It's just a leech on the human life.

That's considered a radical stance, but I +1.

Ads should just be banned anywhere in general.

They concentrate power to those who already have it, because you can make more ads if you have more money. The local burger joint cannot compete against macdonals on advertising, the local soda against coca cola.

It's ugly, eat attention, and interrupt.

It creates business models with terrible incentives, which leads to censorship in medias, quantity over quality, attention driven content, etc.

It encourages mass surveillance, and is used to influence society in the worse ways, making it dangerous to democracy.

Finally, if you remove ads, suddenly you get a much better filter for things: if people don't think it's worth even a little bit of money, let it die. It was not worth it.

Besides, even if you pay, you still see ads. You see submarine articles in paid newspaper, ads before your movies in the theater, ads in your bus ride...

Can you imagine, all this ads money, now free to be invested in something else?

Re: Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)

#114
post #57
post #37

Some additions: Stores also cannot use their full façade for advertising. Branding colors and details are OK, but logos cannot be too large (don't know the exact rule). The law is picky. Some stores cheat by having a glass façade, and using LEDs inside that glass. Like this: https://imgur.com/a/CLdUD1C Since this law was adopted, there's been an increase in full building graffiti, which is not banned. Now 10 years la…

> Since this law was adopted, there's been an increase in full building graffiti, which is not banned. Now 10 years later, it is more likely to see one of these nowadays than an empty outdoor frame Nearly all of these look like murals, not graffiti (these are distinct forms of street art). Regardless, those photos are beautiful and I'd love to have those instead of billboards in my city.

Are building murals not associated with ghettos outside the US? Where I live you know if you start seeing big faces on walls you're in the bad part of town and need to be careful.

Re: Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)

#115

In the US, the state of Maine does not allow billboards. It's a thing I didn't notice until living elsewhere, and it's really nice.

[flagged]

I can’t help but notice how much assumption and spin is heaped into that comment. FWIW, neither of those states is in the bottom ten by per-capita GDP. Is your claim based on absolute GDP, and if so, why? Most of the states that actually are in the bottom ten by per-capita GDP have a lot of billboard advertising, so how do you rationalize your suggestion that outdoor advertising is linked to economic activity? Texas and California are both in the list of states least friendly to billboards, and they are the top 2 states in absolute GDP. https://billboardinsider.com/the-8-least-friendly-states-tow...

> it’s not like they really are giving up much with not having advertisements.

What a strange statement. I’m sure you’re aware that ranking states by GDP says nothing about their absolute economic measures. You cannot claim that being low in the rankings leaves them with nothing to lose, that’s just poor logic. The per-capita GDP of Vertmont is about $63k per year, while Colorado (which is in the top 10) for example is $82k per year.

Re: Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)

#116

In Zurich, the ban against billboards was recently introduced as well. It reminds me of the discussion of ad blockers on websites like Youtube and Co. After all, advertising is actually a fundamental part of the economy. How are things in Sao Paolo 10 years later?

> After all, advertising is actually a fundamental part of the economy.

Ridiculous claim. Product discovery happens regardless of street advertisement.

It very much is visual pollution.

Re: Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)

#117
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since this law was adopted, there's been an increase in full building graffiti, which is not banned. Now 10 years later, it is more likely to see one of these nowadays than an empty outdoor frame Nearly all of these look like murals, not graffiti (these are distinct forms of street art). Regardless, those photos are beautiful and I'd love to have those instead of billboards in my city.

Are building murals not associated with ghettos outside the US? Where I live you know if you start seeing big faces on walls you're in the bad part of town and need to be careful.

I live in NYC and I associate murals with mainly industrials districts. There are plenty of murals everywhere but if I hit a block that's covered in them I think industrial which I don't associate as a bad part of the city.

Re: Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)

#118

As an individual, I'd welcome no advertisements everywhere. I think ads were abused long enough. It's just a leech on the human life.

I am very much against advertisements in media. If a service doesn’t come with an ad-free option then I don’t subscribe at all. I am not as radical when it comes to advertisements in the cities. 100% no to billboards. But if a local restaurant wants to advertise pictures of their dishes at their location (not across the town), that’s fine with me. As long as ads are local to the business, tasteful and in limited size/quantity I’d be ok with that.

Re: Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)

#119
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious - what's something that's not an eyesore? People think art is, graffiti, even buildings, etc. The difference is some of these generates money for governments to solve actual problems, and the others... do not.

One key difference is the scale. You can think of a billboard as really bad graffiti that’s shoved in your face to manipulate you. Graffiti is ugly too (not to be confused with urban art) and should always be removed. Generating money for the government isn’t something to be concerned with in this context, and most likely a billboard doesn’t generate enough money for the government versus the drain it has on the publ…

You see, you just said that "We just don’t have the tools yet to objectively define beauty" and "Boston City Hall is objectively an awful building" (and holy shit, it really is awful) in the same paragraph! Don't you see the contradiction?

In another comment here, someone said, "I'm not arguing for or against that - I'm just stating a fact (...) I find it extremely ugly."

Hey, "I find it extremely ugly" IS arguing against! There is the contradiction again.

But you see, people are all apologetic because they are afraid of criticizing. The truth of the matter is that tagging, graffiti, murals or whatever you want to call these abominations are made by very poor youngsters who could have access to real art if they wanted (museums, libraries, internet), but they don't because they are brought up in a ghetto culture that basically forbids them from even getting interested in traditional art. And a lot of people cower when they criticize it (or never criticize it at all) because criticizing that garbage is considered politically incorrect. So that so-called "art" is only tolerated thanks to fear of reprisal and should be labeled "fascist art" because that's what it is.

Re: Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)

#120
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to separate it from grafitti (which evokes some form of art) You seemed to be implying pixo is not art tho. Funny thing is, American use of the world graffiti was precisely to deride stuff that they didn't consider 'urban/street art'. Just some youth made graffiti tags...

I guess its because in context I meant to separate Art (as is human search for meaning and expression not for the purposes of survival and reproduction) from art (as in technically developed and aesthetically pleasing) Pixação may be Art, but it is ugly (which is subjective)

I don't see how the distinction adds any value to the conversation. Besides, if you think ugliness is subjective, you should say you consider pixo ugly, not that it is. This whole 'capitalized concept' is sounds very pretentious to me. Pixo is art, you may not like it, but there certainly is technical development built into it and some people find it pleasing or it wouldn't exist. Insisting in keeping it out of some definition of art just seems to me like a way to deride it in a way that you can justify intellectually. I don't like it. I find it very ugly. But I don't feel the need to create some art category it doesn't belong to in order to justify my opinion.
Post reply on HN