São Paulo, one of the world’s largest metropolis, issued a ban on outdoor advertising in 2007. Despite heavy criticism from corporations and ad-agencies Brazil’s largest city remains ad-free to this day. This is how São Paulo looks like five years after the ban on visual pollution.

"The law is a rare victory of the public interest over private, of order over disorder, aesthetics over ugliness, of cleanliness over trash... For once in life, all that is accustomed to coming out on top in Brazil has lost." - Roberto Pompeu de Toledo, a columnist and author of a history of São Paulo, in the weekly magazine Veja.

This photo shows how much outdoor advertisement there used to be in São Paulo before the ban:

Before and after the ban: