Las Vegas A City Without Ads?

Las Vegas A City Without Ads?

Las Vegas: A City without Ads?
America is a country with a prosperous and dynamic economy thriving and running successfully due to many reasons. One main reason behind America’s success is its flourishing advertising business. Advertising is what motivates consumers to buy; buying is a result of business; and business is what keeps our economy running. Anywhere one travels in America, he/she will come across some form of visual advertisement; it is impossible to avoid advertisements in this country. Sao Paulo, “the world’s fourth-largest metropolis and Brazil’s most important city,” has wisely accomplished a dramatic change that has altered the way the inhabitants of the city view their surrounding everyday life (Sao Paulo: A City Without Ads, 1). Sao Paulo was able to rid itself of almost every single type of visual advertisement present in the city; a task very difficult to achieve. When one looks at a city such as Las Vegas, which thrives on visual advertisements, it is quite questionable as to what effects a law such as the one passed in Sao Paulo would bring to the city. The city of Sao Paulo seems to show more success after the ban of visual advertisements, whereas a city such as Las Vegas would seem to probably lose importance if it were to undergo a similar situation. Both the article of Sao Paulo and the image of the Vegas strip made me wonder if such a drastic change would be successful in other cities as well.
In “Sao Paulo: A City Without Ads,” published on Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters by David Evan Harris on August 3, 2007,   Gilberto Kassab, the mayor of the city, passed the Clean City Law. This law required many forms of visual advertising to be stripped away from the city. “Since then, billboards, outdoor video screens and ads on buses have been eliminated at breakneck speed. Even pamphleteering in public spaces has been made illegal, and strict new regulations have drastically reduced the allowable size of storefront...