Tallinn tackles road sign pollution to clear up the urban visual field

The Estonian capital refuses to have its streets serve as an extra marketing space for private businesses

The City of Tallinn has had enough of the numerous road signs that clutter the street sides of the Estonian capital and officials have decided to remove most of them as they consider them practically useless – especially in the age of easy navigation tools available on everyone’s phones.

That of course is not about reducing the number of traffic regulation signs but rather the informational road signs that point the direction to take to reach certain places in the city. From now on, only signs indicating the location of public institutions and important attractions will remain, whereas signs showing the way to different businesses will go extinct.

Bettering the visual appearance of the Tallinn streets

These days, it’s trendy to talk about all kinds of pollution and the clustering of many road signs in one spot or all over the street certainly creates a kind of visual pollution that distracts the drivers. In that way, it can be said that being distracted on the road is also not a good idea.

Furthermore, the idea of ​​organizing (the street order) is supported by the fact that the traditional way in which direction signs were previously used on street posts to find destinations has become less and less necessary due to digital navigation tools,” explains Indrek Gailan, head of the Tallinn Transport Board.

No new signposts or private service location signs will be installed, and the old ones will be eliminated street by street, for example during reconstruction times. To date, the signposts marking the locations of companies have already been removed.