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Comment by brokenkebab | Hacker News Reader

Telling "lure you attention" is just a way to frame it. There are plenty of evidence that visual monotony has negative effect on mind, and FWIW in most modern urban environments (blocky, and painfully uniform) ads often do a little bit of favor by providing variance. I've been to places where street ads are heavily regulated to the point it's noticable that there are less billboards and they are more plain. Unless those are full of historical baroque, gothic/art nouveau buildings it absolutely doesn't make it more attractive (I support restricting ads in historical towns).

As for claim about accidents: how about murals, decorative lights on houses, big brightly lit windows?

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Well, not every roof over a busstop bench needs to look the same. With ads it does. Plant (different!) trees inplace of the billboards. Or (god forbid) just let your local graffiti-guy spray there...

Btw.: a nice info-display emits over its life around 2t of CO2 PER YEAR! Most of it in waste..

> ads often do a little bit of favor by providing variance

If your neighborhood needs ads to have variance, it says something really sad about it. You don't need gray concrete everywhere in order to build dwellings. Some cities like Cuba overflow with city gardens to feed the locals.

> As for claim about accidents: how about murals, decorative lights on houses, big brightly lit windows?

Murals are not a problem: they're part of the environment, not something designed to stand out of the street (literally). As for flashing or strong lights, they are indeed a problem in my view.

Ads making a city more beautiful…?

How about some landscaping and art instead?

For starters, let's read as written: I didn't say beautuful. Second: ok, replace ads with landscaping. One note though: ads pay for themselves, will it work with landscaping?

> For starters, let's read as written: I didn't say beautuful.

Fair, I didn’t mean to put words in your mouth. But I would argue that “less monotonous or plain” is not that different from “more beautiful”. I doubt you want random variety. People want variety that is interesting and nice-looking.

> One note though: ads pay for themselves, will it work with landscaping?

I’m willing to enough taxes such that we can make the places where live nice. I think most people would agree. And we mostly already do this.

Parks, tree-lined streets, modest landscaping and art, all of these things make life better and more enjoyable. They also help people feel contentment, reduce anxiety, etc.

It may be economically beneficial as well, as people may be healthier and more productive by living in a city with these types of spaces. I remember seeing some research that supports this idea. One example was patients at hospitals having better outcomes when the hospital environment was more made pleasant and beautiful (I believe it was from a Kurzgesagt video on beauty).

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