Billboard blight

Much has been said about the dangers of air pollution. The problem of foul air has reached alarming proportions that legislation has been passed and is very slowly being implemented. This is to correct a situation where we are killing ourselves and our children by being subjected to modes of transportation and types of engine and fuel that darken our future as city dwellers.

It is not only the air, however, that we now see (or don’t see) being polluted to kingdom come. There’s another growing menace that threatens to further blight our already aesthetically-challenged urban landscape. Our highways, intersections, utility poles and any blank wall are filled with images of pervasive material consumption. Not satisfied with leftover spaces on the ground, these two-dimensional monsters threaten to conquer as much airspace that lies within our field of vision as is possible with technology and raw steel. The menace – billboards.

Billboards to your left, billboards to your right, billboards in front of you glower and thunder, well into the alleys of EDSA, and stretching for miles around. It’s true! These billboards are multiplying as we speak. Every day brings hundreds more steel frames to hold new images of half-naked models, cold beer and fast food amid the ever-slowing traffic on our city streets. Beyond their commercial messages, they cover and maim our view, causing visual pollution as damaging as the air pollution that is our daily curse.

US studies show that billboards add to the stress of commuting. With travel time in the metropolis amounting to hours per trip, this leads to higher blood pressure, tiring eye movements and just plain visual overload. The more jarring stimuli we are exposed to, the more exhausted commuters become. The reverse has also been shown to be true. Drivers and passengers who travel through streets with trees, have visual access to parks and scenic panoramas are more relaxed, less prone to accident, and – need we say it – happier.

We are not happy. Our city is sadly lacking in trees, open space and scenic views. This is partly because of terrible thoroughfare planning but more and more, it is because we are substituting all these elements with the lowest form of urbanscape man has ever devised – outdoor advertising.

Board History

Manila has had billboards since the turn of the century. American businesses started putting them up in the Escolta area in the 1910s. They almost immediately became the subject of public outcry and the elite do-gooders, who formed Manila’s Improvement Society (Yes, we’ve had them as far back as then) managed to curtail billboard proliferation. But this did not last too long. Soon, garishly painted billboards sprouted along Rizal Avenue, Sta. Cruz and other parts of an expanding Manila. Luckily, most of the city was still protected by an aesthetic that put a premium on civic structures and greenery.

After the war, newspapers, magazines, radio and television took the edge out of outdoor advertising. It was only recently, with new technologies like computer imaging and large-scale printing, that outdoor ads became sexier. The proliferation of TV channels and radio stations also made it more effective and oftentimes less expensive to put your message out in the open.

But is this so? Apparently not – if we are to go by recent studies that compared billboard recall in Cebu and Manila. Recall was higher in Cebu where there were fewer billboards. It seems that the more billboards that are put up, the more noise commuters are subjected to, making it difficult to single out one message from among the cacophony on our crowded roads.

The situation has led other cities to take desperate measures (after solving the air pollution problems first, that is). In US cities, there is a growing movement to ban or heavily regulate the use of outdoor advertising. Many areas are being cleared of billboards. This has reportedly caused real estate values to increase by as much as 200% in some areas after the billboards were banned. Four states have banned them all together. These are states that rely heavily on tourism receipts like Hawaii and Alaska. No one wants to travel thousands of miles just to come face to face with billboards and not beautiful scenery. (Attention Dick Gordon!)

Changing Codes

You can change a TV channel or radio station to avoid the drone of commercials, but you cannot turn off a billboard. Don’t we have the right to do so? Many of us find ourselves trapped on the road for hours on end. Why can’t we enjoy the view instead of being asked to buy this or that product that we don’t need anyway? More dangerous is the fact that our children are exposed to alcohol and other vice ads. In addition, the choice of models endorsing these products perpetuates the white-skinned, thin-as-a-waif, macho, mestizo look that all of us kayumangis supposedly should aspire for.

There is also the danger of the structures themselves. A television turned on all night can just give us eye strain. In strong typhoon winds, we have all seen some of these behemoths topple down. Who has liability for loss of property and lives? Apparently, the construction of these billboards is controlled only by easement conditions (10 meters) set by the National Building Code. What this effectively means is that there is almost no control.

To the credit of our government agencies, the MMDA and the DPWH, among others, have set a multi-agency task force to change the situation. We all know how long such task forces take to get anything done. But we should not lose hope. Hopefully, another NGO can be formed to tackle this pressing issue. (We have so many that we all feel pisang -pisa from all this "pressing.")

Optic Options

Are there options? Yes, there are. We can ban billboards and move them to buses and the MRT/LRTs. This is done in Hong Kong and Singapore. (Hong Kong seems unregulated, billboard-wise, but this is not so. Billboards are much regulated there.) Moving billboards on these public vehicles can generate additional income for bus and PUV operators. Profit that they could use to 1) shift to cleaner burning fuels, 2) improve the service itself, and 3) raise driver’s salaries, so they can abandon the boundary system.

There need not be a total ban, for we need signs for directions and convenience, but we desperately need regulation. Profits for outdoor advertising companies need not disappear, too, since shifting or regulating billboards would justify suppliers to charge more for more effective displays anyway. It can be a win-win situation for the ad makers, the ad placers and the ad audience.

We could all also win if we can get rid of all these billboards (and all those messy wires and cables) to open up views to landmarks that have disappeared, like the Our Lady of Guadalupe statue, views of Marikina Valley from Blue Ridge, the Makati and Ortigas skylines (they do look good from certain angles).We would win further if we could also just start planting street trees instead of billboards. Green is a soothing color. Much better than the 16 million colors making up the palette of digital imagery that bombards us every day.

Hopefully, we can get our act together for the clear air act’s implementation. From there, we can tackle visual pollution to even further clean our air and views of the city. Or else, our children will grow up not seeing a single tree, believing that the city is made of billboards interspersed with buildings, and aspiring to be as unrealistically blemish-free and thin as the 50-foot models on those billboards. And hey, who would not mind beautiful, shade-filled, tree-lined drives home?

Next – noise pollution!

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Feedback is welcome. Please e-mail the writer at citysensephilstar@hotmail.com.