Outdoor media: crackdown in Durban, protests in Britain
Outdoor advertising is to be forbidden in much of the South African city of Durban during the 2010 FIFA World Cup, in a move that echoes recent bans in Moscow and Shanghai and the continuing debate over billboards in many U.S. communities.
The ban will apply to all roadside and other outdoor signs within one kilometre of Durban's central business district (pictured), as well as on sites near the airport and railway stations and adjacent to main roads leading to the stadium. It will start before the football tournament begins and remain in place until it is finished.
In a published interview, a Durban official said that most outdoor advertising in the city was illegal in any case under existing regulations.
Separately, a row has arisen in Britain over plans to put 400-inch screens in city centres to show events from the 2012 London Olympics.
“This is not urban regeneration,” Sarah Gaventa of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE), the government's architectural advisory body, was quoted as saying.
She compared the plan to creating “an outdoor Currys”, referring to the British electrical retailer, and said she was concerned about the quality of long-term programming at sites where the screens will remain in place permanently.
While some of the installations will be temporary, displays in Bristol, Cardiff, Middlesbrough, Norwich, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Swansea and the Walthamstow area of London are set to stay.
The Live Sites project's estimated £45m ($90m) cost has been largely covered by private-sector sponsors, according to reports.
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