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A more interesting question -- which I can't answer -- would be the earliest possible year this photo could have been taken, based on the slogans alone. That is, you're unlikely to find 和谐 in 1990s propaganda. Perhaps there's a dictionary of political terms and slogans out there with birth and death years shown for each one. It would be useful for dating things.

17 minutes ago, 889 said:

Perhaps there's a dictionary of political terms and slogans out there with birth and death years shown for each one.

和谐 was 胡锦涛, so it would have been between 2002-2012.  A quick search turns up that the slogan (and policy) was introduced at the 十六届四中全会, which was September 2004, so no earlier than then.

 

The city is

绵阳 in 四川 province

For all the difficulties of Chinese, that sign is a reminder that it's hard to write even one word in English and get it right.

3 hours ago, 889 said:

A more interesting question -- which I can't answer

 

I can tell you when it was taken to the day, and possibly even the hour and minute.

The real date's not what we're interested in. If we were, we'd have looked at the phone numbers and QR code.

 

It's how slogans can help date Chinese photos and texts. Archaeology of a sort.

2 hours ago, imron said:

和谐 was 胡锦涛, so it would have been between 2002-2012.  A quick search turns up that the slogan (and policy) was introduced at the 十六届四中全会, which was September 2004, so no earlier than then.

和谐 is 胡锦涛's signature but that particular combination of 24 characters is called 社会主义核心价值观, which was introduced in the 十八大报告 at the end of his tenure, and it wasn't until 2014 that it started to appear on street signs. See footnotes 1-4 of this Baidu Baike entry https://baike.baidu.com/item/社会主义核心价值观/3271832#reference-[1]-893054-wrap

3 hours ago, 889 said:

Perhaps there's a dictionary of political terms and slogans out there with birth and death years shown for each one. It would be useful for dating things.

Yes we need a sloganology dictionary.