Billboard blight escalates driving danger while degrading our landscape
At a time when cities around the world are reducing or eliminating outdoor advertising, the city of La Mesa is considering a new digital billboard initiative. Billboards - especially digital billboards - are nothing more than commercial visual clutter which at best promote inequality and overconsumption and often lead to making our roadways even more prone to distracted driving. With San Diego’s strong sign laws are under attack again, we must reject this initiative.
Let your reps know you don't want digital billboards! Amending the County's decades-old ban on digital billboards opens the door to visual blight and pollution that has been held at bay since the mid 1980's. The International Dark Skies Association has already voiced its opposition to changing current law. Let your representatives know you do not want to see Times-Square-style, garish advertising in La Mesa.
Let your reps know you don't want digital billboards! Amending the County's decades-old ban on digital billboards opens the door to visual blight and pollution that has been held at bay since the mid 1980's. The International Dark Skies Association has already voiced its opposition to changing current law. Let your representatives know you do not want to see Times-Square-style, garish advertising in La Mesa.
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Beginning in the 1960s, First Lady Ladybird Johnson pioneered a nationwide effort to reduce sign pollution along the nation’s highways. Ultimately many cities, counties and states across the country enacted strict sign laws to abate sign proliferation and preserve natural and urban vistas free from or with reduced sign pollution, light pollution, and traffic hazards caused by signage blight.
Now, our relatively sign-free environments, created by these reforms over the last 50 years, are eagerly eyed by private interests as a lucrative opportunity to reap huge profits by installing off-site advertising on land uncluttered by it for decades.Government officials should not sacrifice signage-free vistas for speculative financial gain that could create legal loopholes leading to massive increases in outdoor advertising and corresponding degradation of our environment. The safety hazards posed by digital billboards and digital ad kiosks, in particular, are reason enough not to allow them. |
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Billboard advertisers tout the insidiousness of their medium as a sales point:
“You can switch TV channels or the radio station, but you can’t turn us off,” ~ Hande Jones, Lamar Outdoor Advertising |
International precedents
A recent Swedish study concluded digital signs are much more distracting to drivers than previously thought; consequently all such signs in Sweden have been ordered removed. Similar measures have been adopted in Brazil, France and China.
Past initiatives
Proposal to amend County of San Diego Sign Ordinance to permit digital billboards
San Diego County Supervisors considered revising County sign laws to permit digital and other currently prohibited signs, yet the County study failed to analyze the potential harm of reversing decades of sign controls. Read the report yourself: County Study. San Diego County Supervisors have been studying a proposal to amend the County's decades old ban on digital billboards, opening the door to visual blight and pollution that has been held at bay since the mid 1980's. The International Dark Skies Association has already voiced its opposition to changing current law.
San Diego County Supervisors considered revising County sign laws to permit digital and other currently prohibited signs, yet the County study failed to analyze the potential harm of reversing decades of sign controls. Read the report yourself: County Study. San Diego County Supervisors have been studying a proposal to amend the County's decades old ban on digital billboards, opening the door to visual blight and pollution that has been held at bay since the mid 1980's. The International Dark Skies Association has already voiced its opposition to changing current law.
Take action
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