Can Cities Ban Advertising? | Montpellier & Lyon Examples

Thousands of advertisements. This is what we are exposed to every day. These advertisements capture or even divert our attention, are injunctions to (over)consume, occupy public space for commercial purposes…

For a decade, in France, more and more municipalities have announced bans or reductions in advertising (Grenoble, Marseille, Bordeaux, Lyon, Rennes, Nantes, etc.). Some municipal candidates are integrating this project into their program, others believe that it could undermine the budgets of communities already in bad shape.

So can we do without advertisements in cities? If yes, how? Can cities ban advertising? How much do they stand to lose if they do so? We take stock.

Where do city advertisements come from?

The idea of ​​displaying commercial messages in public spaces is not new. So go (by train!) to Pompeii. You will find commercial murals.

But the fact of systematizing and contractualizing these displays is, however, much more recent. This owes a lot to a French industrialist: Jean-Claude Decaux. He is the famous inventor in the 1950s of the “Bus Shelter”, a commercial name now as essential as the principle it underlies: street furniture which shelters both passengers in transit and advertising posters.

JC Decaux now offers communities the opportunity to install and maintain urban equipment in exchange for the right to use advertising spaces in the public domain. These concession contracts go far beyond just bus shelters and often include annual fees.

On paper, everyone is a winner:

• Passengers wait for the bus dry.
• Communities do not pay money to equip their public domain and they often even receive a fee.
• JC Decaux’s corporate clients can broadcast their advertising.

Why ads are a problem

First, this model creates economic dependence of cities on a private service provider. Then, it imposes essential advertising in the daily landscape of citizens. But we know that advertising:

• creates frustration and even dissatisfaction among us.
• increases consumption in societies where consumption is already ecologically unsustainable.
• leads to potentially harmful consumption choices, particularly in terms of food. According to Public Health France, more than half of the advertisements seen by children and teenagers concern fatty, salty and sweet products. In 2023, Que Choisir alerted to the fact that 88% of advertising spots targeting children promote Nutri-Score D and E foods.
• also leads to climate-damaging choices in terms of mobility. The automobile advertising market is worth 2.5 billion euros per year in France according to a WWF estimate dating from 2025. Two thirds of this sum promotes SUVs, a climate and security disaster. Bon Pote has long denounced the presence of advertisements for planes which are even found in train stations. And yet, this is still the case in France, in February 2026.
• this is also the case for information. Bon Pote revealed to you last April how and why we still find advertisements for books in French train stations that are enriched by climate denial.
• saturates our attention by exploiting innate biological reflexes, which increases our cognitive load (CNRS researcher Mehdi Khamassi cited several reference publications on this subject during his hearing at the National Assembly in 2020).
• has an ecological impact that is all the more significant as panels are increasingly lit and/or digital. According to an Ademe study dating from June 2025, 307,000 digital screens are active in France (of which 75,000 are managed by advertising agencies and 15,000 fall strictly under the legal definition of advertising… but the others can broadcast advertising in addition to messages of a cultural nature or public interest).

What municipalities can do against advertising

For a decade, several pieces of legislation have allowed municipalities to regulate advertising and penalize illegal displays.

Since the Grenelle 2 law, municipalities and intermunicipalities can integrate a local advertising regulation (RLP) into their local urban planning plan (PLU), and in doing so adopt stricter rules than the basic national regulations which govern general principles (respect for historic buildings, maximum size of panels, etc.).

Cities’ room for maneuver is expressed in the clauses of contracts entered into with service providers and by measures which can make it possible to impose more limited panel sizes (concretely, banning, for example, the famous 12m2 4x3s) or to enlarge the areas freed from advertising (near schools, in historic areas or for aesthetic reasons). These measures must be “proportionate” so as not to be canceled in the event that posters initiate proceedings before administrative courts. And, as we will see, this happens often.

Second system, which has existed since 2024: mayors and presidents of intermunicipalities are now the only ones with the power to sanction offenses relating to illegal advertising. Municipalities can draw a significant windfall from this: the city of Paris estimated the amount of fines addressed to 36 brands at 1.3 million euros, mainly from the “ fashion, jewelry and entertainment », caught red-handed.

And abroad: Amsterdam, Stockholm, Sydney….

Last December, the city of Amsterdam imposed a ban on advertising for certain products (industrial meat, airplanes, thermal cars) in its new contracts. Amsterdam’s decision follows that of other Dutch cities such as The Hague, Utrecht or Delft but also those of Stockholm or Sydney which had banned fossil pubs. A first attempt, via a renegotiation of contracts with posters, failed at the end of 2020. The city therefore included the measure in a municipal ordinance. In France, this type of initiative risks being attacked by professionals for “breaking equality”, we explain this to you in the last part of this article.

What municipalities do against advertising and what it costs them

Determining and comparing precisely what advertising brings to municipalities is a challenge, because the figures vary according to the duration, the extent of the concessions and of course according to the cities and their populations. But some communities have communicated the amounts received via advertising, which shows that these amounts are far from negligible for their budgets:

• Grenoble : In 2014, when the city renounced its contract with Jc Decaux, the annual concession was 600,000 euros per year, or six million euros over ten years. The agglomeration has retained a contract, in particular via its joint union for public transport, for an amount of 200,000 euros per year.
• Paris In 2024, in an interview with AFP, the current mayor of the capital, Anne Hidalgo, regretted: “If I could do without advertising, I would gladly do so but I have not yet found the magic solution to erase 40 million euros of revenue from the city budget”. In 2021, Paris City Hall assured that the only giant advertising banner placed during the renovation of the Madeleine church had brought in 8 million euros, or 80% of the work budget. These figures are to be compared to the overall budget of the city of Paris, voted at 11.3 billion euros in 2025.
• Marseille : In 2022, the city and the metropolis reported a shortfall of one million euros following the vote on their new local advertising regulations which reduced the place of advertising in public spaces, particularly in certain emblematic districts. For your information, the city’s budget is close to 2 billion euros.
• Bordeaux : In 2022, the municipal council decided to limit advertising in its streets (removal of 8 m² formats on boulevards, ban on installing advertising panels near schools, extinction of street furniture between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.).
• Lyon : In June 2023, it was the metropolis which banned advertisements from several public spaces, including metro stations, but also reduced the maximum size of panels or banned advertisements on construction site tarpaulins involving municipal buildings. What remains are advertisements mainly on bus shelters and several hundred JCDecaux panels, the contract of which lasts until 2032.
• Nantes: In 2023, the city of Nantes has decided to gradually ban advertising in 70% of its territory, and to dismantle more than a thousand billboards. After renegotiation of the contract with JC Decaux, the fee was reduced by 3.5 million euros per year. For comparison, the metropolitan budget amounts to 1.8 billion euros.
• Montpellier: In 2025, the city of Montpellier negotiated its new advertising contract including the removal of all digital screens and large formats (4×3). The total number of advertising media drops by 33% and their size is also reduced. Advertising is also banned near schools and banned for “junk food, strong alcohol and sexist messages”. Finally, the main side of the panels is reserved for municipal information, with advertising relegated to the rear side.

Cities in court for limiting ads

These measures necessarily displease the posters, who do not hesitate to attack the cities before the administrative courts. Last November, the metropolis of Rennes saw its advertising regulations (RLP) partially canceled by the administrative court after a complaint from advertising companies.

At issue: several provisions would cause a “disproportionate attack on the freedom of commerce and industry.” It is the technical modalities which are contested, in particular the calculation used by the metropolis to evaluate the size of the posters or the precise identification of the places where posters are prohibited for reasons of protection of the living environment. “The regulation of advertising cannot be transformed into an almost general ban,” justified the administrative court, which therefore partially ruled in favor of the posters.

The city of Brest experienced the same situation in 2019. The decision concerning the metropolis of Lyon this summer shows the real cat and mouse game that cities and billboards are currently playing. The metropolis had attacked the methods of the Phenix display group, whose particularity is to place panels inside stores, behind the windows. This is smart, since the law does not regulate these private spaces, even if they are visible from the street. The metropolis banned this practice, but the administrative court annulled this decision as well as other measures, insufficiently justified in its eyes.

The standoff is underway

On the one hand, an ecological and public health necessity, which pushes municipalities to regain control of their visual landscape. On the other, a historic economic model and posters ready to defend their ground in court.

If the approach is far from being linear – as reminded by the millions of euros at stake in each community or the legal setbacks in Lyon and Rennes – the direction of history is towards a reduction in advertising pressure.