Apr 2025
Most improvements to cities are hard — they take millions of dollars and years of planning.
But the change I have in mind is easy — it just needs a few of us to decide to care.
Many people don’t realize that in order to build a new building, the plan has to be approved by the city’s design review board. This board is a group of people who have veto power over every aspect of the new building’s design.
For example, when a new bank branch was opened in downtown, our city design board approved a particular beige stucco for the outside wall. By accident, the contractors installed a faux wood instead. After the contractors appealed the mistake, city staff required them to tear the wall out and reinstall the approved siding.
The design board works hard to ensure that our city’s built environment is cohesive, beautiful, and in line with an established set of guidelines.
Meanwhile, someone can put up a 48-foot advertisement wherever they want with zero oversight. These ads are placed in very visible locations and designed to be bright, colorful, and distracting. Their appearance and placement do substantial harm to the peacefulness of the urban environment.
If someone showed up to the design review board wanting to splash a 48-foot advertisement in the face of every person coming into the city, they would get laughed out of the room. The reason these billboards get put up at all is because they’re exempt from design review, even though they’re a much more visible part of our city than the typical building.
Our neighbors will benefit much more from having a calmer public space than having a massive billboard reminding them to drink the latest beer.
The only people who won’t absolutely love this change are a few landowners who make money by spraying logos all over everyone’s public space. Literally everyone else benefits.
Let’s ban billboards in the city.