Whenever I return from travel to a city filled with billboards, I’m reminded how much I love the DC area’s near-complete absence of the horrible blight that is outdoor billboard advertising.  It seems that the residents of São Paulo felt the same way, and have banned all outdoor advertising from their city. That is, not only are new billboards banned, but old ones must come down. Here’s a flickr set showing some of the resulting bare infrastructure. Background on the ban here.
(I wouldn’t personally support a US edition of the policy adopted by São Paulo – it reaches well beyond billboards and into protected speech, I think – but the results sure are a beautiful thing to contemplate. Atlanta would do well to take a lesson.)
Beth
On the other hand, you can just wind up with blandness in the name of city beautification. The city of West Sacramento recently required the removal of all these great old neon signs on their main drag. Congratulations, West Sac, you now look like every other patch of suburban blight in California.