No Ads

Brazil's largest city, Sao Paulo banned all forms of outdoor advertising in 2006.

Advertising can be considered parallel to free speech, and taking this away from citizens can come as a shock.
However, the response in Sao Paulo was surprisingly supportive of the measures. The people enjoy a city where now they can enjoy and appreciate the architecture and nature without the pollution of billboards and LED displays, which also were previously influencing their buying decisions. Residents are able to, and have no choice but to do their own research on goods and services, ultimately getting them close to an unbiased purchase. Manipulation by outside influencers has been minimized, and opened up individual opinion.
The community has welcomed all of the free and empty space by street art. The city's problems have been exposed as well. All of the slums, previously masked by all of the advertisements now sees the light, forcing the people to address problems that were previously neglected.
Along with exposing its problems, the government took many risks with this law. Money loss is a huge factor that cannot be ignored, as is loss of support for beneficial initiatives. This is largely due to the fact that the government itself can no longer advertise public works projects.

With the backlash Fearless Girl ad caused in the US, many could argue that getting rid of public advertisement can only be for the better: less controversy, less argument, less distraction. But isn't talk the catalyst for change? As Sao Paulo was forced to face its underdevelopment and poverty, the installation of Fearless Girl forced America to face yet another polarizing issue, exposing how multi faceted these problems really are. The city would never have thought that removing ads would put them face to face with the city's neglect, nor did the city think to argue over a statue of a girl.

Having free speech-even free advertising is important; with the amount of people in the world needed to reach nowadays, advertising is a fundamental part of communication.

reference https://newdream.org/blog/sao-paolo-ad-ban http://adage.com/article/media/sao-paulo/311049/