Grenoble frees its streets of 326 billboards, planting trees and notice boards (2015)

Grenoble, a city of about 160,000 in the French Alps, had signed a ten-year street-furniture contract with JCDecaux that let the advertising group install billboards, advertising columns and bus-shelter panels in public space. When the contract ran out at the end of 2014, the newly elected Green mayor Éric Piolle made good on a campaign promise: he did not renew it, and announced that advertising would be dismantled and replaced with greenery.

The numbers made the decision concrete. From January to April 2015 JCDecaux removed 326 panels — 227 street-level 'sucettes', 20 advertising columns and 64 large billboards — freeing more than 2,000 square metres of public space. In their place the city planted about 50 young trees and made room for free notice boards where residents, associations and cultural organisations could post without paying.

The city argued that the sacrifice was small: the old contract had paid about €600,000 a year, and a renewed deal was expected to be worth only about €150,000 as the industry moved to digital screens, which the mayor did not want in an 'apaisée' (calmer) city. A 2013 survey had found three-quarters of residents felt advertising was becoming invasive, and opponents of the move still criticised the lost revenue — roughly 1% of the city's €370 million budget — and the removal of the familiar advertising columns.

Six months later, before-and-after photos by franceinfo showed the change was real: most of the 326 panels were gone, a row of five trees stood where a billboard had faced a square, and the city said it had planted more trees than promised. Not everything disappeared — bus-shelter ads remained under a separate transport-authority contract — and Grenoble began a longer revision of rules on private signs, which it pursued over the following years.