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Scenic America's 2014 Conference to take place in Houston April 11

Advocates of scenic beauty from around the country will convene at the Magnolia Hotel in downtown Houston on April 11 for Scenic America’s 2014 Conference.  The theme of this year’s event is: "How scenic beauty supports economic development, livability and tourism."

Featured speakers include Carroll Shaddock, founder of Scenic Houston; Gerald Hines, founder and chairman of Hines, a global commercial real estate company based in Houston; Rice University Professor Stephen Klineberg, Ph.D., who will synthesize more than 30 years of Houston-area quality of life surveys; and Rhode Island-based multimedia artist Barnaby Evans who will demonstrate how his creation WaterFire draws tens of thousands of people into downtown Providence on summer nights.

Planners are eligible for 4 CM credits through the APA's continuing education program.  Click here for details.

For a full agenda and speaker list go to: www.scenic.org/houston2014.

Tide continues to turn against digital billboards

Scenic East Bay won a partial victory recently in their campaign to stop five new digital billboards from blighting the eastern edge of the new $6.4 billion Bay Bridge between San Francisco and Oakland.

Applications for two of the five digital billboards have been withdrawn after significant public pressure from Scenic East Bay and its supporters, who contend that the proposed billboards violate state and federal laws. The group is working hard to prevent the other three digital billboards from blighting the public's investment in the new bridge.

In nearby Richmond, CA, Councilmember Tom Butt has been actively engaging his constituents on the digital billboard issue, and the responses he's received have showed that citizens are overwhelmingly opposed to them.  In fact his constituents have voiced support for revoking the permit for the city's one existing digital sign.

The southern California city of Carlsbad rejected a proposal for the city's first digital sign, saying it would set "a dangerous precedent," and the city council in Glendale, AZ also voted down digital billboards. 

Meanwhile, Crain's Chicago Business highlighted this op-ed from Scenic America as their featured opinion piece of the week: Billboard plan isn't such a bright idea for Chicago residents. 

Billboard Fact Sheet available

Scenic America has created the Billboard Fact Sheet, a handy 4-page reference guide to basic facts and figures about roadside billboards, and we're making it available free as a PDF download.

The Billboard Fact Sheet is not intended to be comprehensive, but rather to answer some of the more commonly asked questions about billboards and to help stimulate conversation and debate among citizens, public officials and business owners.

For more in-depth information about battling billboard blight visit the billboard issue area of our website.