I was looking for some good news. even if only a touch of good news.

and i found it.

Sao Paulo A city stripped of advertising. No Posters. No flyers. No ads on buses. No ads on trains. No Adshels, no 48-sheets, no nothing.

I hadn’t realized how littered the skies become with billboards and advertising until I moved to Beirut. Literally, at every angle, there’s a billboard, a sign, trying to convince me that I’d be sexier (and thus happier) if I just had that lip-enlarging-lipstick, those (extremely) tight jeans, that couch (where I can stretch in my tight jeans). There are signs on the median, on the right of the highway, on the left of the highway, on buildings, billboards on top of billboards. They are a driving hazard plus visual polluting plus culturally destructive. Why the latter? One – this constant voice all around us in the city telling us that we need to change ourselves by buying something. Two – more and more the ads in Beirut are in English or French, and not in our native language – Arabic. So: not only do we need to enlarge our lips, push our butts into the tightest jeans, but we should then let go off our native tongue in our efforts to appear more “European”.

so, back to Sao Paulo.

Although the Clean City law is not sufficient – it is a beautiful start. A slap to the constant consumerism, and a return of public spaces.

Thank you Mayor Kassab.

For more on the Clean City law, check out: this article in Business Week , and this article in the International Herald Tribune.