Gdańsk Landscape Protection Act
How The City of Gdansk is fighting the chaos of outdoor advertisement for the new order in open space?
Since the early ’90s, due to the democratic and capitalistic changes, Poland was flooded by the outdoor advertisement. In 2013 the Mayor of Gdańsk passed the directive to make a new rule for outdoor advertisements in public space (Mayor’s directives have no power on private properties). The City learnt how to clean unwanted advertisements from public space — what works, and what does not work.
In 2015 the Parliament of Poland passed a national Landscape Protection Act (pol. “Ustawa Krajobrazowa”) which changed many other national acts in order to allow better control of advertisements visible from outdoors. Moreover, the Act made it possible to create local municipal landscape protection acts and allowed fines to be levied on subjects who do not obey the law. That changed everything!
Soon after, the Gdańsk City Council decided to design the Gdańsk Landscape Protection Act which was passed after three years of intensive work (e.g. ideas from Grenoble, France included). The whole area of the City was partitioned into 8 zones with different regulations. Only 3 of them allow billboards! The map of zones is available via Google Maps:
or via ESRI GIS :
Nowadays, every subject in the City of Gdańsk — both private and public sector — is obliged to obey the new rules. If not, the subject is fined the amount, which could work on the most expensive street in the Nation’s Capital, Warsaw. The fine increases every day of illegal ad exposition — better not to try prolonging the promotion. Yet few have tried — resistance did not take long. Moreover, if an object was used for the advertisement, but there is no ad at the moment, the object has to be dismantled, or made legal another way.
Since April 2018 numerous signs and billboards were dismantled, moved, re-scaled or exchanged for new legal ones. The process continues to be shaped by public opinion and support. The City of Gdansk brought back the freedom of enjoying the landscape.
You may read more about Gdańsk Landscape Protection Act in:
- the road-map for small businesses: The Gdańsk Signboard — Gdańsk Landscape Protection Act Guide:
http://www.uchwalakrajobrazowagdanska.pl/poradnik-gdanski-szyld-10.pdf
- the official website:
http://www.uchwalakrajobrazowagdanska.pl/
- on the official Facebook fan-page:
November 2019 a chapter about Practical Aspects of the Gdańsk Landscape Protection Act was published (pol. “Uchwała Krajobrazowa Gdańska — Aspekty Praktyczne” in Problemy Planistyczne — jesień 2019, vol.2 2019).
