Beauty And The Beast: Signs, signs, everywhere here are signs - not!

Those of us who like to gloat that it's "Just another beautiful day in San Diego," find many things to distinguish our city from the ugly metropolises we disdain. But one difference is so subtle it can go unnoticed: the relative dearth of billboards in San Diego. The qualitative difference this absence creates in our environment is no happenstance. It resulted from a hard-fought battle by city officials, inspired in part by First Lady Ladybird Johnson's highway beautification campaign of the mid-1960s. The rebellion against sign pollution spread, and by 1972 the San Diego City Planning Commission had already spent years debating proposals to ban all off-site advertising signs in the city. 

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