The end of outdoor advertising
When you stroll through Belgian cities Gent or Brugge, you feel like you’re in a fairy tale. Everything seems to fit. Only after some time has passed, you realize why everything seems to fit so well. The original thought of the developers and architects are untouched. The view of the city is very carefully protected. Billboards, signs, striking shop windows or even posters are forbidden. And the result is beautiful.
In this era, in which information is always available for everybody, in which we ourselves determine what brands are allowed to interrupt our lives, in which everything is taken care of for us, advertising is unnecessary. Businesses won’t need advertising to flourish any longer. They will find other ways to bring together producing and consuming roles. This means the end of advertising. Street view wise, this will mean that cities can become as beautiful as Gent again. First we will need a generation that is used to function without advertising though, which moreover will forbid outdoor advertising. This generation hasn’t been born yet, so it will at least be 2050 before we will get here. After all, even the youngest generation is still regularly tipped through advertising (like flyers), and thus is still valuing advertising. After that we will really start thinking about city views again. At the end of this century a lot will have changed.
