Ordering of the Elements that Compose the Urban Landscape – Clean City Project

Background Information

Law 14.223/06 known as “Clean City Law” faced many internal and external challenges from the design to its approval at City Council of São Paulo: the approval, the acceptance of the people of Sao Paulo on the applicability and the transformation of the political will of the Mayor of the city into effective actions to achieve the standards established by the law and its enforcement.

The concept of the Clean City project is not inspired in any previously proposed program for world cities. It is based on the peculiarities of the city of São Paulo, as the extension of its territory of 1,509 kilometers, its 11 million inhabitants and its characteristics of global metropolis of a developing country.

The challenge of recovering some basic rights of citizenship such as the acknowledge of our right to live in a city that respects its urban environment, the historical heritage and the integrity of its architecture and combat the visual pollution in order to improve the quality of life in the city, resulted in a text of a law which prohibit the publicity and all kinds of visual outdoor media and all that is visible from public space. The outdoor pieces of propaganda and publicity will be allowed only in public spaces, ordered and ruled by the municipal government and designed mostly for street furniture. This is a challenge of changing a paradigm that involves the domestic and foreign business of advertising and propaganda. The innovation of the proposal to ban the advertising and the reduction in the size of all commercial buildings indicative signs created a need for dialogue, for a channel of communication between the government and segments of business and trade of the city.

A number of meetings with the municipal and segments of society represented by associations, unions, foundations, and other franchises, resulted in a major support for membership and approval of the project by the São Paulo population.

It is important to point out that the costs to the São Paulo city Hall to introduce the project was quite low and the City Hall had only to pay its employee’s salaries.

Innovation for the Initiative

The success of the Clean City Project was determined by the originality of its conception and the need of eradicating visual pollution and organizing media elements in public spaces in order to improve the citizens’ quality of life. The polluted landscape of city of São Paulo was mainly due to the disorder of the elements randomly inserted in the urban environment, the oversized signs and billboards and the excess of advertising messages, which lead to a bombardment of visual information that put at risk the objective the message and cause stress to São Paulo’s inhabitants. It shows the process and the transformation of the urban landscape of the city after the strict law enforcement. The implementation of the public policy occurred in a record time of six months. The implementation of the public policy created to reorganize outdoor media pieces and the excess of advertising messages and information and its results in São Paulo’s urban environment can be found in the city area. A visible transformation can be observed in the streets, avenues, facades, squares, roundabouts, which resulted in a shared well-being due to the ordering of the landscape.

Without any doubt, at the beginning, there was a resistance of the companies, stores and from the population that did not believe in this dramatic measure, but within a few months the introduction of the law by a process of elimination of the big pieces, the organization of the advertisement, the city started out to be revealed. Its architecture has begun to appear, leaving behind the visual pollution that suffocated the city.

Then, the population has begun to support hardly the law and act as a inspector of the law, reporting to the City Hall’s Department of Fiscalization when were irregular establishments. The companies that before entering with cases against the City Hall, became partnerships of the public power, and showed strict chronograms to be adapted to the law, with was obeyed literally, showing the integrity of this association.

The companies believed and benefiting itself with this public policy, it was the contrary they supposed it will happen, the customers have increased because the stores became more visible than they were.

Outcomes and Assessments

The strategy to implement the policy for the placement of the elements of the urban landscape as well as fighting visual pollution and environmental degradation; exceeded expectations due to the short time it was implanted. The communication channels established between the government and segments of business and commerce of the city and civil society, and the action of the Urban Landscape Protection Committee - CPPU, has aided the development of actions aimed at increasing the positive results of the clean city project. The used guidelines and strategies include: the free access of people and goods to the urban infrastructure; signaling the prioritization of public interest in order not to confuse drivers in driving vehicles and ensure free and safe travel of pedestrians; the protection, preservation and restoration of cultural heritage, historical, artistic, landscape of popular recognition, and the natural or built city environment; proper locations for publicity ads; the implementation of effective surveillance system, agile, modern, planned and ongoing; the development of standards and specific programs for different sectors of the city, considering the diversity of the landscape in various regions; the disciplining of the elements present in the public areas, considering the standards of occupancy of private areas and volume of buildings which shape the urban landscape; the creation of new standards, more restrictive, institutional communication, informative or indicative; the adoption of parameters of size, position, quantity and interference to the most appropriate traffic signs; the constructed elements and the vegetation, whereas the ability to support the region; the setting of standards and guidelines for the deployment of components of the urban landscape and the corresponding area of advertising.

It is important to point out that the law comprehensived all of São Paulo territory, 31 Sub-City Halls and 1,509 kilometers. The law was an example for others counties of São Paulo State and several Brazilians’ states’ capitals like Fortaleza and Rio de Janeiro, a lot of cities around the world are interested in knowing more about the project, such as Paris, Shanghai, Brussels, Guadalajara ( Mexico), Buenos Aires.

Benefits to Other Cities

The Clean City Project has had its main contribution on reducing of visual pollution on ordering the urban landscape and preservation of the historical heritage, forbidding the external advertisement and regulating the size of signs of shop fronts.

The Clean City Project also has showed its environmental vocation on forbidding the external advertisement, billboards, by the reduction of the consumption of 2,500 tons per year of paper and 660 tons per year of PVC blankets contributing this way to the reduction of production and consequently emission of CO2.

The elimination of the external advertisement contributed with the environment by reducing the lighting thrown to the sides and thereby reduced the intrusion of light in homes and in downtown, contributing to a better quality of sleeping, therefore, to the quality of life of the citizens who live at this areas.

Preliminary studies done by technicians of the City Hall showed that the elimination of the lighting advertisement, billboard, front and back light pieces contributed for reducing the annual consumption of electric energy in 131,400Mwh, that means an annual consumption of 60,000 Brazilian citizens.

The survey has made in 2007 by research institutes (PEREIRA, 2007) showed that 79 percent of São Paulo population, about nine million people, accepted and approved the law. This is the extent of the benefit and happiness generated by the Clean City Project.