billboards versus trees

Heard another entry in NPR's fascinating "America's Shifting Ground" series this evening while cooking up some tasty quesadillas (the key is to cook them in as much butter as possible. and use good tortillas.); I haven't caught all the episodes (and didn't realize until now that the ones I had caught were part of a series), but the ones that I have heard have been fascinating. The series focuses on the intersection of numerous forces -- local zoning boards, evolving technologies, family, sprawl, private corporations -- and, often, how those forces affect the ownership of the land. The study of the ownership of land is particularly fascinating subset of cultural geography (which, if I were forced to choose an academic subject to get a Ph.D in, would probably be my choice), but NPR does a good job of keeping it practical and interesting.

Highway 192, Osceola County, Florida via GoogleMaps

The story I caught tonight was on the conflict between, on one side, residents and business owners along US Highway 192 in Osceola County, Florida (which is quite close to the epicenter of strip-mall-ism) and another set of property owners -- billboard operators. The good citizens of Osceola levied a tax on themselves to pay for infrastructural (sidewalks, bike lanes) and vegetative (trees) improvements to a portion of the highway. This all went well until the billboard operators (in this case, Clear Channel -- is there anything Clear Channel can't ruin?) realized that the trees were blocking motorists' views of their billboards:

""The billboards were there first, and the trees started popping up, and they were done so in a way that they would block the view of the billboard," he [the head of the Orlando division of Clear Channel] says. He argued that by planting the trees where it did, the government was acting unfairly. "It's like, 'Hey, we're going to give you a permit to be in business, but then we're going to take it away after you've already invested all this money.'"

Clear Channel and other billboard companies complained that beautification projects on a number of Florida roads threatened their business, so they lobbied the state Legislature for protection.

In 2006, lawmakers drafted a bill to outlaw the planting of trees on the public right-of-way in front of billboards. Each sign would be guaranteed a 500-foot-long view, uninterrupted by a single branch of leaf.

At the time, Randy Johnson was state representative for Osceola County along Highway 192. He supported the bill. "Those billboards are important, they feed lots of families," he testified at a hearing. "This is a tourism corridor. Tourism depends on billboards, not on trees."

The Highway, Pruned (Image from NPR)

A strong public backlash against the bill produced a compromise in which the trees along the sides of the highway were permitted to remain at the expense of the trees in the median -- though the county official carefully watches over the cut trees, keeping them inoffensively small in an act of guerilla gardening:

"Lizasuain thought that was the end of the story, but he's since made a discovery. It turns out the crape myrtles did not die as intended. They are now sprouting through a bed of low-growing shrubs on the highway median.

Lizasuain is quietly letting the trees live. He keeps them trimmed to a tiny size so no one notices they're there, but to him they serve in silent protest to the billboard law. Should those in power someday change the law back in favor of the trees, the crape myrtles will be ready to emerge and provide a canopy of flowers that, for now, remains illegal."

Posted by eatingbark at September 8, 2008 8:57 PM