City lights and the Moon over the night side of Earth, seen from the International Space Station.
Red Initiative

Visual pollution

We protect what we hear and breathe. What we see every day shapes our mood, our sense of safety and our pride in a place just as much.

NASA

Visual pollution is the damage and clutter that degrade the places where we live: vandalism on walls, trains and monuments, heavy infrastructure through landscapes and streets, and neglect that nobody repairs. It rarely makes headlines because it does not poison anyone directly. But it costs the public a great deal of money, it changes how safe people feel, and the places people love most, historic centres, parks, coastlines and quiet valleys, are nearly always the places where it has been controlled.

What counts, and what does not

Not everything that catches the eye is pollution. A city is meant to be lively.

  • Signs and billboards, placed well, are part of the urban fabric. Shop signs, cinema marquees, market boards and the lit squares of Tokyo or Times Square are part of what makes a city feel alive, help people find their way, and support local business. What matters is placement and scale: signs that respect the architecture, stay out of residential windows and natural views, and are not so bright or animated that they distract drivers. Good sign rules, not bans, are the answer in most places.
  • Commissioned murals and street art made with the owner’s permission can transform a blank wall into a landmark.
  • Graffiti vandalism, painted or scratched without permission on other people’s property, public transport and heritage, is the most widespread and costly form of visual pollution in many cities.
  • Energy and telecoms infrastructure: transmission pylons, overhead power lines and tangles of street cables, which can dominate landscapes and streets for generations.
  • Neglect: abandoned buildings, broken street furniture, litter and fly-tipping.

Graffiti: a costly problem for everyone

Graffiti vandalism is often dismissed as harmless self-expression. The people who pay for it and live with it see it differently. Every tag on a train, bus shelter, school or shopfront has to be cleaned, painted over or replaced, and that money comes from fares, taxes, rents and prices: from everybody.

What it costs

  • Germany’s railway, Deutsche Bahn, puts the damage from graffiti at about €12 million a year, and recorded some 32,000 cases of vandalism across its network in 2024 (Bahnblogstelle, 2025).
  • London’s boroughs spent about £7 million a year on graffiti and its transport companies more than £6 million, before counting the replacement of acid-etched Underground windows, which could add £10 million more. The London Assembly estimated the total cost to London’s economy at over £100 million a year (London Assembly, 2002).
  • In the United States, a figure of $12 billion a year is often quoted in police guidance, though its original calculation is not published (Weisel, US Department of Justice, 2009). Whatever the exact total, cities, transit agencies, schools and small businesses all carry the bill.

Costs go well beyond cleaning. Trains and buses are taken out of service to be cleaned, glass etched with acid must be replaced rather than washed, and specialist removal from old stone, brick and bronze can damage the surface it is meant to save. On heritage buildings and monuments, a single night of spray paint can cause permanent harm to materials that have survived for centuries.

A city worker in a hard hat and respirator scrubbing a graffiti tag off a utility box on a street corner, in black and white.
A city worker removes graffiti at the corner of Pike and Harvard in Seattle, 1999. Every tag costs someone time and money to clean. Photo: Seattle Municipal Archives, CC BY 2.0

What it does to people

Heavy graffiti changes how a place feels. Residents and visitors read it as a sign that nobody is in charge: surveys and field studies consistently link visible disorder, including graffiti and litter, to greater fear of crime, lower trust in neighbours and a weaker attachment to the neighbourhood (Sampson and Raudenbush, 2004). People who perceive their neighbourhood as disordered report more anxiety, anger and depression, largely because disorder breeds mistrust (Ross and Mirowsky, 2009); in one study the poorer health of residents of disadvantaged neighbourhoods was explained almost entirely by perceived disorder and fear (Ross and Mirowsky, 2001). Fixing places helps: in a randomised trial in Philadelphia, cleaning and greening vacant lots cut residents’ reports of vandalism by 39 percent and of feeling unsafe going outside by 58 percent (Branas et al., 2018), and reduced feelings of depression among nearby residents (South et al., 2018). That stress falls hardest on those who cannot choose to move away: older people, children and families on low incomes.

Does disorder spread?

In 1982 James Q. Wilson and George Kelling argued in The Atlantic that visible disorder, left unrepaired, signals that nobody cares and invites more serious offending: the “broken windows” idea (Wilson and Kelling, 1982). The strongest experimental evidence came much later. In a series of field experiments in Groningen, in the Netherlands, researchers compared the same places kept clean and covered in graffiti. With graffiti on the walls, the share of people who dropped a flyer as litter rose from 33 to 69 percent, and the share who stole an envelope visibly containing a banknote from a letterbox doubled from 13 to 27 percent (Keizer, Lindenberg and Steg, 2008).

The research is debated, and it is important to be precise about what it shows. Evidence that disorder spreads is strong; evidence that aggressive policing of minor offences reduces crime is much weaker. A review of 30 studies found that disorder-focused strategies reduce crime modestly, and that community and problem-solving approaches, such as cleaning up places and working with residents, worked better than mass arrests (Braga, Welsh and Schnell, 2015). The lesson is not to punish harder, but to repair faster and involve the community.

A tag removed the same day is an invitation declined. A tag left for months is an invitation accepted.

What works

  • Rapid removal. The best-known success is New York City’s subway. From 1984, once a car had been cleaned it was kept clean: any new graffiti was removed within two hours or the car was taken out of service, so painted trains no longer ran. By May 1989 the whole fleet was free of graffiti. US police guidance reports that rapid removal reduces new graffiti, and many cities now aim to remove tags within 24 to 48 hours, because fast removal takes away the reward of being seen (Weisel, 2009).
  • Legal walls and commissioned murals. Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program began in 1984 as the Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network, which worked with young graffiti writers to paint murals instead (Mural Arts Philadelphia). It has since created more than 4,000 works of public art with local communities, and has become a symbol of the city (City of Philadelphia). Designated walls where artists may paint legally give talent a place without imposing it on everyone.
  • Protective design. Anti-graffiti coatings on vulnerable surfaces, good lighting, planting such as climbing plants on blank walls, and well-used public spaces make vandalism harder and cleaning cheaper.
  • Community ownership. Adopt-a-street schemes, volunteer clean-up days and easy reporting apps turn residents into guardians of their own street.
A large abstract mural in blue light-trails on the side of a building beside the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia.
Convergence by Rebecca Rutstein, a commissioned mural of the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, 2019. Photo: Rebecca Rutstein, CC BY-SA 4.0

Teaching children where art belongs

Children love to draw on walls, and that creativity is precious. What they need to learn is not that painting is bad, but that a wall belongs to someone, and that other people live with what we put on it. Schools, families and youth groups can:

  • Give art a place. School walls, hoardings around building sites, underpasses and community centres can host murals planned by children, with permission and a design everyone agrees on.
  • Teach consent. Before painting anything, ask the owner, and ask the neighbours who will see it every day. Art that is imposed on people who did not choose it is not a gift.
  • Show the other side. Invite the caretaker, the bus driver or the shop owner to explain what cleaning a tag costs them, in money and in time.
  • Offer a stage. Art clubs, sketchbook projects, legal walls and competitions for public murals give young artists a way to be seen, and to be proud of it.
  • Respect that not everyone wants it. Some people want colour on every wall; others value plain stone, old brick or a quiet street. A shared city needs room for both.
A long road tunnel under a railway, its walls and ceiling covered from end to end in colourful painted pieces.
Leake Street, a road tunnel under Waterloo station in London, where painting on the walls is allowed. Legal walls like this give artists a stage without imposing their work on people who did not choose it. Photo: Maggie Jones, public domain

Power lines, pylons and cables

Of all the infrastructure that shapes a view, energy transport is often the most lasting. A line of steel pylons can dominate a valley for a century; a web of overhead cables can darken a street and hide its buildings.

A line of high-voltage pylons crossing green farmland and woods in Devon, England.
High-voltage pylons crossing the countryside in the South Hams, Devon. Photo: Lewis Clarke, CC BY-SA 2.0

High-voltage transmission lines are essential: they carry power from wind farms, solar parks and power stations to where people live, and the energy transition will need many more of them. But how and where they are built matters for the people who live beside them. A study of house sales in Québec found that a direct view of a pylon or its cables could lower a home’s price by 5 percent to well over 20 percent, while simply being near the line corridor, out of sight, did not (Des Rosiers, 2002). Pylons in open landscapes and national parks are among the most visible structures people build.

Burying cables solves the view but not the bill. Underground transmission cables typically cost 5 to 10 times as much to build as overhead lines (ENTSO-E and Europacable, 2010). Over a whole lifetime the gap narrows: a UK engineering study put overhead lines at £2.2 to £4.2 million per kilometre, against £10.2 to £24.1 million for buried cable, with underground about 4.7 times the lifetime cost on one example route (IET and Parsons Brinckerhoff, 2012). Buried cables are also harder to repair and dig a long trench through soil and habitats. For local distribution lines on streets, US utilities report underground construction at five to ten times the cost of new overhead lines, though buried lines are far less exposed to storms (Edison Electric Institute, 2013).

The sensible answer is to choose carefully: bury lines where they cross the most valued landscapes and town centres, route new lines along existing corridors and away from homes, use lower-profile pylon designs, and tidy up street cabling whenever roads are dug up. In Great Britain, the regulator set aside £500 million to put existing lines underground in protected landscapes; in Dorset, 22 pylons came down in 2022 after 8.8 km of line was buried (National Grid, Visual Impact Provision).

A high-voltage pylon with its cables lowered and anchored in concrete blocks on a fenced grassy site.
Overhead cables being taken down at Hackney Marshes, east London, in October 2008; shortly afterwards the wires and the pylon were gone. Photo: sludgegulper, CC BY-SA 2.0

In many fast-growing cities, the problem is smaller but closer: bundles of telephone, internet and power cables strung between poles and balconies, added one by one and never removed. They hide buildings, block trees, and can be a fire and safety risk.

A dense tangle of overhead cables and coiled wires on a street in Shanghai.
Overhead cables on a street in Shanghai. Photo: Jakub Hałun, CC0

Proven solutions

Visual pollution is not a fate. Cities, transport operators and whole countries have cleaned up, tidied up and brightened up, and several measured what changed. None of them did it by blaming people; they did it by deciding together what belongs on a street, and then keeping to it.

  • New York City: a clean subway fleet. From 1984, once a subway car had been cleaned, it was never allowed to run with graffiti again: new tags were removed within two hours, or the car was taken out of service. By May 1989 the entire fleet was free of graffiti, because painting a train no longer earned an audience (Weisel, 2009).
  • Philadelphia: from anti-graffiti network to open-air gallery. What began in 1984 as the Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network, working with young graffiti writers, has grown into Mural Arts Philadelphia, which has created more than 4,000 murals with local communities (Mural Arts Philadelphia; City of Philadelphia). In the same city, a randomised trial found that cleaning and greening vacant lots cut residents’ reports of vandalism by 39 percent and of feeling unsafe going outside by 58 percent (Branas et al., 2018).
  • São Paulo: a city that set its own rules. By 2006 the streets of Brazil’s largest city were covered in billboards and giant hoardings, much of it put up illegally (BBC News, 2006). Its Clean City Law, in force from January 2007, removed outdoor billboards and set size limits for shop signs (Lei 14.223). Around 15,000 billboards came down, and surveys reported that more than 70 percent of residents approved (Adbusters, 2007). The city also learned a lesson: early clean-up crews painted over officially approved murals, and after protests São Paulo created a register of street art to be kept (Bloomberg, 2008). São Paulo chose an unusually strict answer for an unusually cluttered city; most places will prefer good rules on size, placement and brightness, which is what we support on this page.
  • The United States: scenic roads. Four US states and more than 700 communities have chosen not to allow billboards at all (Scenic America). Many more set rules on where signs may stand.
  • Great Britain: pylons taken down. The regulator set aside £500 million to bury existing power lines in protected landscapes. In Dorset, 22 pylons came down in 2022 after 8.8 km of line was put underground (National Grid).
  • Many historic cities bury overhead cables whenever streets are rebuilt, and set rules for the size, colour and lighting of signs in their centres.
Old New York subway cars covered in painted graffiti, standing in an open-air rail yard.
Graffiti-covered subway cars in a New York City rail yard. From 1984 New York removed new graffiti from cleaned cars within two hours, and by May 1989 the whole fleet was clean. Photo: GiorgioBertin39, CC BY-SA 4.0

Organisations doing this work

These non-profit organisations publish what they do and have results you can check. Please look at their work and, if you would like to help, consider giving to them directly through their own websites. The Local Solar System Foundation has no affiliation with any of them and receives nothing from them. Before you give, read each organisation’s own annual reports and accounts.

  • Mural Arts Philadelphia (United States; its fundraising partner, the Philadelphia Mural Arts Advocates, is a tax-exempt non-profit). Creates public art with neighbourhoods, young people and people returning from prison, and has made more than 4,000 murals since 1984.
  • Keep Britain Tidy (United Kingdom, registered charity 1071737). Works to end litter and waste, and to help people take pride in the places where they live and work, including through volunteer clean-ups.
  • Keep America Beautiful (United States, tax-exempt non-profit). Runs the Great American Cleanup and a network of local affiliates that organise clean-ups, beautification and litter research across the country.
  • Scenic America (United States, tax-exempt non-profit, founded in 1982). Helps communities protect scenic roads and views, write sign rules, and bury overhead utility wires.

How you can help

  • Report graffiti and damage quickly. Most councils and transport operators have apps or phone lines; fast reporting makes fast removal possible.
  • Remove tags on your own property promptly, or ask your council whether it offers free removal.
  • Join or start a clean-up day in your street, park or station.
  • Support legal walls and commissioned murals in your area, planned with the people who will live beside them.
  • Talk to children about where art is welcome, and help them find a wall, a sketchbook or a project where their work can shine.
  • Support undergrounding of cables when streets are dug up, and ask how new power lines near you will be routed.
  • Help map it. Volunteer through the contribution board.

Sources and further reading