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Outdoor advertising has a long history of serving as a landmark of the experience economy. In the United States early signage often featured traveling shows and circuses. As the automobile changed lifestyle trends, billboards followed the new roading experience. Today, outdoor advertising is increasingly seen as a part of experiencing cities, clustered in entertainment districts. Through spatial reorganization, integration into the built environment, and the development of increasingly engaged technologies, outdoor advertising is adapting to the new experiences of urban life. Signage is being used in new ways to enhance the quality of life in places that are commonly associated with consuming goods and services. As a landmark of the experience economy, signage orients individuals to these locations by drawing attention to opportunities to eat, drink, and have fun.

Outdoor advertising proliferation and the development of land use regulations in Los Angeles illustrate the complicated nature of balancing the economic and physical aspects of urban development. Regulating outdoor advertising is part of a movement to control the spatial structure of the consumer economy and manage the appearance of the landscape through zoning. The efforts of planners to regulate outdoor advertising are frequently challenged legally or stalled by political indecision. The history of Los Angeles billboard regulation illuminates the financial demands for encouraging the spectacle of consumer landscapes as well as the persistent difficulty planners have had regulating urban appearance.

Objectives. Our study sought to examine associations between the content of outdoor advertising and neighborhood ethnic/racial and socioeconomic composition to see whether particular communities disproportionately host harmful content. Methods. We constructed a spatial database of photographs taken from June 2012 until December 2012 in 7 identically zoned communities in Los Angeles, California, to compare outdoor advertising area and content. We selected communities to contrast by ethnicity/race, income, education, and youth population. Results. At-risk communities and communities of color hosted more outdoor advertising depicting harmful content than other communities. Among included neighborhoods, harmful content and the proportion of outdoor advertising overall were most prevalent in communities of Asian Americans and Latino Americans. In all communities, harmful content represented at least 24% of outdoor advertising space. Conclusions. This study provides evidence of the potential for land-use decisions to result in spatially inequitable health impacts. Although dictating the placement of outdoor advertising through zoning may seem sensible, such a decision might have the unintended consequence of disadvantaging the well-being of local communities. Neighborhood factors require more contextually nuanced public health and land-use policy.