Now, on the heels of the same populist approach that has driven them to gut the City’s ability to generate tax revenue wherever possible, they’ve started looking at ways to fill an enormous (and growing) gap in revenue.

It didn’t take them long to fix on corporate branding. Just today, according the Globe and Mail, D-Ford has suggested that “the city should be selling naming rights to just about everything but city hall.” His brother, the Mayor, likes the idea too.

This idea is problematic for a lot of reasons. For one, naming rights and branding of this sort seldom bring in the sort of revenue streams that are really needed. They’re a modest supplement at best – and represent a much much bigger win for the advertiser (not the best example, but think of how many times “Rogers Arena” has been printed or mentioned over the Cup run alone).

More importantly, the sale of naming rights and the branding of public space compromises the spaces themselves – and the people that use them. Shellacking public spaces in a layer of corporate advertising, or selling off naming rights to the highest bidder makes these spaces feel less public. It privatizes them. At times, it can even make the space seem down right exclusionary.

A city’s parks, plazas, community centres and libraries ought to be places where people can avoid the incessant shill-job that surrounds us at so many other junctures in our daily life. These spaces – and many others – are public assets and are part of the commonwealth of the city. They ought, by and large, to remain free from the noisy layering of big advertising symbols with their constant entreaties to buy something. (And to be clear, I’m not talking issue with the small a-frame sign from the adjacent mom-and-pop cafe).

There are exceptions to this, of course. Times Square in New York, Dundas Square in Toronto. But they’re designed to be exceptions: an obesity of signifiers (pouting lips and perfume bottles, shiny electronics and skinny jeans) all soaring 100 feet into the air. These spaces are outliers, artifacts, larger than life – a set of spaces covered with big ads and an over-the-top narrative of excess.

Times Square has a story to tell, for sure. It has its place — outside the norm. This approach should not be the m.o. for public space.

The changes are the end result of a package of commitments made by the Olympic bid partners (including the Province and City) to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in order to secure the Games. The commitments promised, in essence, a series of favourable marketing opportunities for the corporate sponsors that would be investing in the 2010 project – favourable, here, meaning big visual wallop combined with messaging exclusivity. Goodbye Cola wars, hello Coca-collosal.

The commitments were then set into regulatory motion late last year and early in 2010 when City Council rolled out a number of amendments to existing bylaws and controls (even requesting changes to the Vancouver Charter itself). In many cases, these changes suspended normal governance practices for the period of the 2010 Games.

And the murals? One set of changes was made to the Sign Bylaw – the tool through which City licensing officers and bylaw enforcement folks regulate the size, materials, placement and related details of almost any sort of sign that you can find in the city.

The result? The following are a few examples of what’s been installed throughout the city.

One of the biggest appears to be the 14-story building wrap at the TD tower (Georgia and Howe):

Another prominent mural ad covers off on the host province tourism message:

Some, like the Canadian Flag installed at the Hotel Georgia tap into the nationalist spirit, others, such as the murals wrapping Hudson’s Bay, or Canada Post (see below) feature prominent shots of the athletes, with corporate logos comprising a small part of the overall sign.

Here’s another one at the corner of Burrard and Hastings:

Incidentally, the massive signs and murals which now dot the downtown core are part of a one-two branding punch that saw VANOC purchase every available outdoor advertising surface in the region, billboards, bus shelters and more. All, ostensibly, under the International Olympic Committees request to protect Olympic sponsors from “ambush” marketing.

Thus, for the period of the Games, we have a reshaping of the branding iconography found in the Vancouver cityscape. On one hand the breadth of messages has shrunk considerably (only sponsor ‘voices’ can be heard), while on the other, the sheer size of these sponsor messages has grown on an Olympian scale.