Visual clutter remains widespread across Dhaka despite repeated clearance drives and legal restrictions on posters and wall writing. Footpaths, flyover pillars, pedestrian footbridges, electricity poles and residential walls are covered with posters, banners, promotional streamers and commercial signboards. In many areas, layers of advertising overlap, obscuring the structures beneath them.
The problem is particularly severe along major transport corridors. Coaching centres, educational institutions, property developers, commercial enterprises and service providers put up advertisements along flyovers, metro rail pillars and footbridges.
Residential walls are similarly covered, leaving property owners seemingly helpless. Temporary pavement stalls covered with plastic sheets and tarpaulins further detract from the streetscape.
Unregulated billboards, signboards and digital LED displays add to the clutter. Advertisements of different sizes, colours and brightness levels compete for attention, disrupting the streetscape. Experts say excessively bright LED screens can distract drivers at night and increase road-safety risks.
Environmentalists add that the effects go beyond aesthetics. Unregulated artificial light can affect people as well as birds and other animals. They argue that light pollution should be included in urban management.
Dhaka’s two city corporations periodically conduct clearance drives, but the problem has not been permanently resolved.
Dhaka North City Corporation’s figures for November 2025 show that 28 percent of the illegal advertising removed across its 10 zones and 52 wards consisted of political banners, 21 percent of commercial promotions and 17 percent of advertising from educational institutions.
Dhaka South City Corporation launched a similar clearance campaign in December 2025. After issuing a public notice in early December, the corporation began removing unauthorised material from the Science Laboratory intersection on December 8.
DSCC officials said unchecked wall writing, posters and billboards marred the city’s appearance. They added that the Graffiti Writing and Poster Sticking Control Act 2012 prohibits unauthorised promotional displays except at designated sites with permission.
Yet the removals have not produced a lasting solution. New posters and banners often reappear in the same locations within a few days of removal.
Urban planners say enforcement alone cannot resolve the problem. They call for a comprehensive policy covering where advertisements can be placed, their dimensions, colour schemes, lighting levels and installation standards.
They also want the law enforced against those who put up unauthorised promotional materials and designated advertising spaces created and regulated.
Architect and urban planner Iqbal Habib said the problem reflected a broader social and cultural decline. He highlighted posters depicting children and young people in inappropriate ways, saying they set a damaging social example.
Habib added that banners printed with excessive fluorescent and reflective ink could distract drivers at night and increase accident risks and called for greater public awareness.
DNCC Chief Executive Officer Muhammad Asaduzzaman told Bonik Barta that the corporation was working towards the prime minister’s vision of a clean, green city from the ground level.
He said plans were underway for awareness campaigns at institutional and family levels and that awareness activities would be expanded further in future. Asaduzzaman also suggested moving from banners and posters towards digital promotion to reduce the problem, citing international civic practices.
DSCC Chief Executive Officer Md Khaybar Rahman said public awareness was improving and that banners and streamers were less widespread than before. “Even so, if anyone puts them up in isolated cases, we remove them.”
He urged residents to play a responsible role alongside the city corporation in keeping the city clean and beautiful.