Alameda, CA Sign Regulations: Digital Billboards (2026)

9, 'Prohibited Signs,' lists motion devices among the sign types banned outright in Alameda: signs utilizing flashing lights, changing of color intensity, or mechanical moving parts are prohibited including all moving signs. Because a digital or electronic billboard display works by changing color intensity and imagery, it falls squarely within this prohibition rather than the code's ordinary permitting track for permanent signs. The subsection carves out only three exceptions: historic signs, barber poles, and, with a use permit, animated signs but only if determined by the use permit to have outstanding artistic merit.

3, meaning the Planning Board must make an affirmative artistic-merit finding before any changing-image sign can be approved; a routine commercial digital display advertising rotating messages does not qualify. 13: they cannot be located in residential or C-1 districts, cannot exceed fifty square feet, and must keep at least 100 to 1,000 feet of separation from other off-premises signs depending on their size, further narrowing where any billboard, digital or static, could legally stand even before the motion-device ban is applied.