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).
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.
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
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
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.
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
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.
