ENLIGHTENme Lighting Masterplan series
How to ensure that urban lighting takes into account aspects of health and wellbeing? That was what the cities from the Health & Urban Advisory Board (HULAB) explored in the recent HULAB Lighting Masterplan series.
With three special sessions in the first quarter 2024, the series aimed to give a better understanding on lighting master planning: its process, structure and stakeholders, and to spark exchanges of practitioners and collective intelligence on these issues. Ultimately, this supports the drafting of relevant and implementable Health & Urban Lighting Good Practice Guidelines, which will be a major output of the ENLIGHTEme project.
The first two sessions saw presentations from Clarisse Tavin, Group Manager Major Programmes and Projects City of London and Damien Guiraudie, Responsible for the lighting strategy at the City of Montpellier on their lighting masterplan, as well as an external practitioner perspective, from Mark Major, director of Speirs and Major Light Architecture – with 35 years of experience in the field of urban lighting, and many questions and discussions were initiated during these session.
The final session introduced Simona Tondelli, Professor at the Department of Architecture, Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Bologna and coordinator of the ENLIGHTENme project. She gave a good overview of the project dynamics, as well as the intended purpose of the Health & Urban Lighting Good Practice Guidelines, and how the HULAB cities could help in shaping them. A discussion followed about barriers and enablers for better integrating health and wellbeing into urban lighting policies, and what resources and competences are necessary among city departments. Major discussion topics included:
- Communication: how to get the right messages across to the relevant stakeholders;
- Budgetng: how to ensure appropriate budgets and investments levels ;
- Adaptability of lighting through technological innovation and how to ensure privacy of data at user and systemic levels;
- Interdisciplinary collaboration: a recurrent weakness in many cities. As Olli Rantala, Head of Planning from City of Oulu pointed out “City departments need to collaborate across sectors, including health, urban planning, and technology. This interdisciplinary approach will ensure a holistic understanding of the impact of lighting on wellbeing.”
LUCI member cities can request access to the recordings of these 3 very insightful sessions in the LUCI Hub. Please contact Jasmine [jasmine.vanderpol@luciassociation.org]
©ENLIGHTENme
