Scenic Houston's "claim to fame" is its successful fight against mushrooming billboard blight in our city, despite a well-funded and intractable billboard industry that consistently fights regulation, without compromise. But Scenic Houston also works hard in other arenas, where our work creates immediate, positive impacts on our streets and in our neighborhoods, and leads to statutory changes that will benefit our city for generations to come.

Recent success stories include: On February 11, 2009, Houston City Council voted unanimously to continue to allow the planting of venerable Live Oaks along utility easements, acknowledging the broad and leafy tree’s strength, resiliency and ability to obscure overhead power lines. In January 2009, the last of 831 billboards owned by billboard company Clear Channel Outdoor was removed from city streets under an agreement hammered out by the City, in consultation with Scenic Houston, in 2008. On December 10, 2008, Houston City Council reaffirmed the 1980 no-new-billboards ordinance, stating that any efforts to "modernize" existing billboards would cause them to be taken down. This action protects Houston from the onslaught of LED billboards that is plaguing other U.S. cities. On November 12, 2008, Houston City Council voted to ban the use of driver distracting "attention-getting devices" for commercial purposes. The ban will go into effect Jan. 1, 2010.