Looking Ahead: Regulating Digital Signs and Billboards
Zoning Practice — April 2008
By Marya Morris, FAICP
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Cities and counties have always been challenged to keep their sign ordinances updated to address the latest in sign types and technologies. Each new sign type that has come into use — for example, backlit awnings and electronic message centers — has prompted cities to amend their regulations in response to or in anticipation of an application to install such a sign.
The advent in the last several years of signs using digital video displays represents the latest, and perhaps the most compelling, challenge to cities trying to keep pace with signage technology. More so than any other type of sign technology that has come into use in the last 40 to 50 years, digital video displays on both off-premise (i.e., billboards) andon-premise signs raise very significant traffic safety considerations.
This issue of Zoning Practice recaps the latest research on the effects of digital signage on traffic safety and includes a list of ordinance provisions for effective regulation.
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About the Author
Marya Morris, FAICP
<p>Marya Morris, FAICP, is a Principal Planner with Kendig Keast Collaborative, a planning and zoning consulting firm with a national practice. She specializes is comprehensive updates to city and county zoning, subdivision, and land development regulations. Earlier in her career she served for many years as a Senior Research Associate at the American Planning Association, where she authored nine Planning Advisory Service Reports and led multiple research initatives, including groundbreaking work with the CDC and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to re-integrate public health objectives into planning and community design, among other topics. She was a member of the Glencoe, Illinois, Plan Commission from 2009-2017.</p>