“Declutter public spaces”: the City of Paris announced Thursday, among our colleagues in the Parisian, wanting to reduce the place of advertising in Paris. “We believe with the mayor that it is time to begin thinking about the place of advertising in society and public space. This would be consistent with the climate plan which will soon be presented but also the local bioclimatic urban planning plan,” Emmanuel Grégoire, the First Deputy, declared to the daily.
The initiative follows a wish from the group Les Ecologistes at the last Paris Council, which asked that the city “commit to the end of advertising in public spaces”, “remove advertising tarpaulins on scaffolding during renovations of City monuments” or even “decides to remove illuminated advertising on the city’s street furniture”. A text voted on in 2022, still at the initiative of the Les Ecologistes group, had already made it possible to reduce the impact of illuminated advertising in Paris, by restricting their lighting hours.
“Bad publicity encourages consumption”
However, there is no question for the first deputy to “totally eliminate” advertising, but rather to “measure” and highlight advertisements which respect the “base of values” of the town hall. “Good advertising is advertising that informs. Like an ad for an exhibition in a museum, for example. Bad advertising is one that pushes people to consume,” says Emmanuel Grégoire.
If the councilor does not intend to remove all advertisements on the city’s monuments in the renovation phase, he is in favor of thinking about the subject: “We could start thinking about the visuals of these tarpaulins. Some are ugly, others pretty. We could imagine artistic tarpaulins. »