Posters for flights or petrol and diesel cars — that kind of advertising has been banned from public spaces in the Dutch city of The Hague since early 2025. A radical move? Even the UN Secretary-General is calling for an end to "fossil advertising".

Public space is far more than just a collection of streets and squares — it's a place for encounter and exchange. Architecture and urban planning shape how people can meet and communicate, while art installations, demonstrations and gatherings bring the space to life. But alongside these social and cultural uses, public space also serves as a stage for advertising: billboards, advertising columns and LED screens are everywhere in the urban landscape. In the attention economy, the rule is simple: where there are people, there's advertising. And it's not just at iconic locations like Times Square in New York or Piccadilly Circus in London that advertising has long since become a cultural fixture. 

We've got used to seeing model faces every day and reading emotional messages on hoardings — without consciously noticing the contrasts between nature, architecture and advertising. "We only know it this way because for the last two generations, seeing advertising everywhere has just been part of life", says Leonhard Rabensteiner, freelance cultural worker and founder of the Graz-based Werbefrei association…

Read the report by Peter Obersteiner on klimafakten.de