Counter fact: In our city district, which is the richest and biggest district of our 600k developed city, we decided to turn off the street lights at night on purpose to help with sleeping better. There is no street criminality, people feel safe without street lights. Our city is the richest in our country, which is at the top 5 in the world
Is there an article with more details about the decision and the implementation?
I’m curious if the lights are off completely, or are they dimmed and/or motion activated. Also curious about how it affects the costs (and is there a financial motivation as well).
This happens in many towns and cities in the UK too.
For the UK, important streetlight (motorways, junctions, etc) are kept on. But the quieter streets and away from junctions are shut off.
It’s done for “climate” reasons but I’m pretty use the root cause is actually just another cost cutting measure.
"many towns and cities in the UK" is definitely over-selling this. I've never seen this once, so it must be very rare.
Definitely not rare: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0mzkgxr22po
My county isn’t listed there so there plenty more councils which also do this and arent mentioned.
“Many” is subjective though. So your experience could be valid and my statement still true.
It's good that financial and environmental incentives are aligned in this case.
Yeah definitely. It’s not all that often that happens.
Climate, not light pollution?
Personally I’d argue that light pollution is a climate issue. I’m not a scientist though so maybe there’s a more precise definition here that I’m overlooking?
But regardless, energy savings was also one of the cited reasons. So to answer your question: both.
Why would you say it's a climate issue?
Because light is an environmental property to a region and one that can affect the habitat of organisms which live there.
It’s not really any difference to other traditional climate concerns like wind nor rain aside from light being a non-tactile property. But then neither is heat.
I will concede that my interpretation of the term “climate” here might not be correct. I’m not an expert in this field so it’s entirely possible I’ve stretched the definition
Climate is long-term weather patterns.
Ahhh thank you. That explains the puzzled responses to my comments
Germany is pretty strict about "light pollution". You can have lights at night, but they can't spill onto other people's property or shine up into the sky. Personally I think this should be the case in USA as well - you're welcome to light your own lawn, but I should be the decider of whether my own is lit or not. Let alone security lights that shine directly into neighbors' windows...
True, in mi city they are replacing old lamps with more directional and dim leds. Above level 1 flat city looks much much more dark, though at street level you can walk without stepping on a dogshit perfectly.
> Counter fact: In our city district, which is the richest and biggest district of our 600k developed city, we decided to turn off the street lights at night on purpose to help with sleeping better.
To me that seems like a really alien solution. What about closing the curtains?
I was in the prep-meeting for that decision. We don't like curtains. We don't like wasting energy. We don't like light pollution. We prefer peaceful nights
Turning the lights on and closing the curtains to block it seems the really alien solution to me.
If you don't want the lights, why not just turn them off?
It's really common in many cities in France too, also in the countryside to reduce disruption for bats in particular.
Where I'm from moonlight on it's own will disrupt my sleep frequently enough that even if my neighbor did not forget his back light on, I would still sleep with my blockout curtains closed.
When it comes to driving, I would definitely prefer they keep the street lights on, for the increased visibility/safety.
> top 5 in the world
By what measure?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
> Our city is the richest in our country, which is at the top 5 in the world
Right, so you're saying the country itself is within the top 5 by GDP not that the city within your country is a top 5 city (regardless of country).
Yes, they're saying it's the richest city in their country, which is in the top 5 [richest countries] globally.
Where's that? How do I move there? Sounds like a dream come true.
Blasewitz, Dresden. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loschwitz_Bridge
Must be Switzerland I guess...
How do you walk in the street when it is dark? Also even if there is no criminals there can be dangerous animals like dogs, wolves, bears.
Your eyes actually adjust to the dark and you can see fine. And many places in the world have no issues with dangerous animals. There's not gonna be many bear attacks in a Dutch city for example.
No animals, but cats and birds. Just the occasional Neonazi group, which is indeed dangerous if you look like a punk or left. But light doesn't help then
Why not use deep red lights instead, which are sometimes used in wildlife areas to reduce sleep disruption for animals?
Light pollution is probably a good proxy measure for wealth in the local population after a certain point.
A top "5 in the world" city is obviously an outlier.
It seems self-evident that simply turning off street lights in the vast majority of cities will not cause them to become world-leading bastions of calm and safety.