Summary

This live webinar will discuss the evolution of billboard regulation from Lady Bird Johnson’s Highway Beautification Act through the current controversy concerning the nationwide proliferation of high intensity Commercial Electric Variable Message Signs better known as digital billboards (DBB) from rural Pennsylvania where there are three digital billboards in a one mile stretch of country road, to Chicago which approved 30 DBB for $15,000,000 in public funding, to Denver where DBB are completely outlawed, to the City of Los Angeles where a new sky scraper hotel has been approved with digital wall advertising capability. It will treat DBB as the modernization of an historic nonconforming use in the context of fundamental land use concepts. 

We will view the issues evenly through the economic lens of the billboard companies and the aesthetic/safety lens of the regulators and conservationists. We will address the apparent paradox of local municipalities as regulators of advertising, as lessors of public property used for advertising and as advertisers themselves; and analyze enforcement of sign ordinances and the abatement of illegal signs. The webinar will conclude with covering the recent significant court decisions that have set precedents for the legal limits of DDB, and focus on the typical legal means by which DDB are approved.

CM Credits

1.5 CM credits are available for this event. Approved for Law credits.

Registration / More Information

Please let us know if you can attend this session so we can prepare an appropriate number of conference visuals and reference materials. Reply by email to jsteinmann@auburnalabama.org or by phone at 334.501.3045.

For more information on the conference session, visit www.lorman.com/live-webinar/390950.