Democratic Billboard
Democratic Billboard Manifesto:
1. Take into ‘partial public ownership’ the advertising and media infrastructures which inceasingly fill our cities.
2. Redistribute the use of, and access to, this infrastructure. For example:
20% ART
20% LOCAL COMMUNITY USE
20% LOCAL BUSINESS USE
20% NEWS
20% ADVERTISING
The Democratic Billboard is a conceptual urban research tool. We have used it to think about the kinds of socio-spatial demands that architects can articulate through design proposals.
The Democratic Billboard research project has manifested itself in different forms for different schemes. However, all of these proposals are driven by the core manifesto, and articulate a shared demand upon the emerging televisual, security and communications networks and infrastructures that are growing within our cities. The growth of these netwoks is comparable to the development of historic modern urban infrastructures, such as water, electricity, transportation. All have oscillated between various forms of public and private control. Just as these were all sites of political and social struggle over their ownership, management and use, so too is a similar struggle currently being fought over new urban communications infrastructure.
There is a contradiction in that most of the technologies are privately owned and managed, although many of the physical spaces that they occupy, manage and move through, are publicly owned.
