Advertising-free cities... what a concept

In an entirely unrelated student post discussing the Superbowl advertising and the huge stakes that attain to it (which I'm not linking to since the students have made it a private blog), a student mentioned advertising-free spaces.

Apparently, in 2006, the city of Sao Paulo banned all outdoor advertising. 'Fascinating idea', I thought. Being interested in urban planning in an amateur's kind of fashion and having lived in Sao Paulo many years ago, I was particularly interested in the experiment. I was a child when I lived there, so I don't recall anything particular about advertising, but I do remember being surprised by the density of everything in the city, particularly as it compared to the prairie city that I'd grown up in. But then of course my next thought was, 'I wonder if it lasted?'

It appears it has if The Cranbrook Guardian Blog is to be believed.To me, that's even more interesting. I spent some time virtually wandering the streets of Sao Paulo via Google maps and the city is indeed devoid of advertising, though one can find what appear to be sanctioned murals on some of the spaces.

Tony DeMarco's flickr stream documents some of the changes to the city immediately after removing the billboards. As he says, the city feels cleaner now that so much of the advertising (much of it illegal) has been removed. The only problem of course is that the empty signs are ugly while being less distracting. Today, it seems like many of those empty billboards have been removed.

Looking at DeMarco's flickr stream reminds me a bit of that advertisement that shows all the blank billboards waiting to be filled (I can't find it, but I believe it was for a design school). I've always thought they looked really nice as just white space.... Apparently I have to go to Sao Paulo to see something like that, though.

Classroom Etiquette

Every semester I get an email forwarded to me about classroom etiquette. The bulk of the email is just common sense:

Just a reminder that classrooms should be cleaned up at the end of each class in preparation for the next class.
Please ensure that all desks with their chairs are replaced in the proper rows, any additional equipment being used is returned to its original location and when necessary remove any writing from the chalk or dry erase boards.

I actually don't mind erasing chalkboards as long as it's just a small piece, though when someone covers all 4 (or 6) and then doesn't erase, that gets onerous. And it would be nice if there was actually a mention of not shutting down the computer but logging off instead, since the entire start-up routine for the classroom computers is slow and can often take the bulk of the 10 minutes between classes.

But there's one thing the email doesn't address that I wish it could. I don't see how it could do so politely, but what's bothered me most in my teaching, more so than chalkboards, desks and computers, is lingering odours when I take over a classroom.

There have been at least three semesters over the last nine years where I have entered a classroom that smelled unpleasantly of body odour, at least at the front of the classroom (I don't think it's a coincidence that these classes have also tended to be ones that left chalk unerased on the board.) It usually dissipates after the first 10 or 15 minutes, but those first breaths as I set up for class have sometimes been downright awful.

I don't see much of a solution other than plugging my nose, and I'm not advocating that the semesterly email include a line about personal hygiene, but the contamination problem is just as vexing as erasing four boards of calculus equations. Just sayin'.