For many years the advertisements in the Amsterdam innercity is a source of nuisance in the eyes of the Amsterdammers. Especially the Damrak, the socalled Red Carpet which leads from Central Station to Dam square, people find painful to the eyes because of the large amount of advertisements. The city-center council has decided to do something about it. Only advertboards in smaller sizes will be permitted when replaced. Only hotels are allowed to hang (not more than two) flags out. As the first deed the city-center council forced hotel Krasnapolski to take down her international row of flags from her roof. How disturbing are these sort of advert expressions in our historic innercity?
A random selection.

For many years the city council tolerated the proliferation of advertisements in the inner city. Now the aldermen want to get a hold of it, starting with restricting the number of flags to a maximum of two per hotel. Coffee shops, cafés and pubs are not allowed to hang out a flag. The rainbow flag is an exeption and is allowed to put out on gay establishments; she will not equally treated as the Irish flag at an Irish pub, which is nothing else than an advertisement for a place of entertainment and therefore banned.

The city-center council itself has decided to extend her test project until the year 2005; advertisements are put on large cloths hanging on scaffoldings, necessary for restoring or cleaning of façades. One-third of the money goes to the city council, see VVAB steigerreclame. They are allowed to be placed there for periods of nine weeks. A distressed city-center council makes sometimes unusual decisions to generate income. During a recent opportunity for public comments regarding advertisement expressions in the inner city, the subject of scaffolding adverts was of course banned from being discussed.

How these adverts on scaffoldings are effecting our monumental innercity in real terms is shown at the following commercial wrap of the monumental building Magna Plaza (previous the main post office)