Georgia Seeks Sponsors For State Parks

As advertising creeps deeper into our public lives we become more and more comfortable with it's pervasiveness, and become less aware of the conflicting interests advertising might have with those public identities we wish to cultivate in our shared spaces. To combat this ad creep we have setup guidelines of what appropriate spaces for advertising might be. Each town, city, state, etc. makes its own rules regarding this issue. It seems as if Georgia might be one of the first states to break with tradition and allow advertising into one of our most sacred public spaces, state parks.

In a recent NPR report on Georgia's proposal to fund its state park system with commercial ad revenue, Neil Herring, a Georgia Sierra Club lobbyist, explains his concerns like this "It's a place for people to get away from that[ads], it's a refuge, that's why it's a park." My only wish would be that we extend the same concerns to our city streets that we extend to our great public parks. As city residents, the streets are our refuge and should be treated accordingly.

Listen To the full NPR report [HERE]