I agree. Line-of-sight advertising should be considered a form of pollution (like sound pollution). Plenty of municipalities already tax outdoor advertising to some extent, but the rates are way too low. I can understand why it isn't usually a priority for city goverments but given how profitable advertising can be I hope more people demand that their local goverments change consider changes. It's also potentially a bigger revenue source for cities. Either they extract more tax for public services or the billboards come down. Win-win in my opinion.

[–] JacobCoffinWrites 4 points 1 year ago

Agreed - I consider advertising and billboards to be a blight. I'm always pleased to see graffiti go up on some around here because it's so much more human - one-off pieces that took at least some skill and a bunch of risk to put up.

My SO and I once looked into the cost to rent some local billboards with the idea to just put up local artists work like some kind of outdoor gallery/museum (and deprive all the local politicos and anti-abortion groups the prominent space). It turned out to be cheaper than we expected but not enough to do on a lark - we'd need to set up some kind of organization and fundraise and weren't in a place to do that at the time so it went on the back burner.

Getting rid of them altogether would be better than paying into the existing system.