Urban lighting shapes the image of the city at night – Nanjing
Nanjing is the capital city of Jiangsu province in China with a population of over 8 million, and one of the world’s largest inland ports. It joined LUCI in June 2019.
Why is urban lighting important for the City of Nanjing?
The primary role of good urban lighting is to meet the needs of the public for nighttime activities and movement, as well as to shape the image of the city at night. It should enhance the charm of nightlife to meet the city’s unique development needs.
Urban lighting will help us explore a new path to accelerate the development and realisation of the smart city.
More importantly, urban lighting will help us explore a new path to accelerate the development and realisation of the smart city. So lighting is very important for the urban development of Nanjing, and it fully reflects our development concept of innovation, coordination, green, openness and sharing.
Chen Quan, Director of the Design Department of Nanjing Street Lamp Management Office
Why did the City of Nanjing decide to join LUCI?
LUCI is an international association that focuses on the use of light as a major tool to promote urban, social and economic development taking into account sustainability and environmental concerns.
Nanjing is the only megacity in the Yangtze river delta region of China and our rapid urbanization process has also lead to lifestyle and energy problems. So the City of Nanjing has decided to join LUCI to strengthen international cooperation and support our use of lighting as a tool to help the city address these development challenges.
We would like to use their experience to guide the construction of the next stage of our city lighting.
As members of LUCI, we hope to communicate with city members and learn about their good urban lighting projects. We would like to use their experience to guide the construction of the next stage of our city lighting. At the same time, we are also hoping that some of the associated members of LUCI, such as international companies and lighting designers and architects can participate in and support the urban lighting research and projects in Nanjing.
What is special about lighting in Nanjing?
The construction of functional lighting in Nanjing has been synchronised with the city’s urban construction and environmental improvement, and has been upgraded year by year.
Landscape lighting in Nanjing uses historical memory as the starting point: we have set varying styles of lighting colours and technique depending on historical architecture or modern architecture.
Landscape lighting in Nanjing uses historical memory as the starting point.
We aim to create a complete and unified image at night as well as a unique atmosphere to embody the urban style of harmonious coexistence between tradition and modernity. The lighting emphasizes the status of Nanjing as a famous historical and cultural city but also reflects Nanjing’s vitality as well as the development of cities in China’s Yangtze river delta region.
Could you say a few words on the lighting strategy of Nanjing?
The key focus of the lighting strategy of Nanjing is the long history and culture of the city. It aims to highlight Nanjing’s unique landscape and nightscape, and create unique, dynamic and share-able urban lighting.
Some of our key focuses are:
- Highlighting culture – by planning the development of city lighting with harmonious coexistence between Nanjing’s tradition and modernity.
- Balancing layout – by balancing urban lighting and protecting the night; balancing lighting construction intensity in different areas and different development stages; and balancing functional lighting and landscape lighting.
- Multiple perspectives – to meet the diverse needs of different people and build open and share-able urban lighting.
- Green development – ensure intelligent and sustainable development of urban lighting in Nanjing.
Please briefly tell us about some of the City of Nanjing’s recently completed lighting projects.
In line with the urban construction plan, and along with various major urban events, Nanjing has, at present, created a number of representative night view nodes.
The lighting of landscape nodes, transportation hubs, city portals, important roads and night landscape in Nanjing has continued to progress.
For example, in 2014, in order to welcome the Youth Olympic Games, a landscape lighting project was implemented in the Jianye district and major traffic nodes in the main city.
In addition, based on the urban illumination plan for 2016 – 2018, the lighting of landscape nodes, transportation hubs, city portals, important roads and night landscape in Nanjing has continued to progress. So far, a number of key projects have been completed, such as the nightscape lighting project of the Xuanwu lake, the Confucius temple, the Ming city wall, the Qinhuai river, etc. All the lighting projects reflect the desired night image for Nanjing.
What are the City of Nanjing’s lighting priorities for the future?
In the next stage of urban lighting development, Nanjing will further highlight three elements – “green”, “culture” and “city” – in order to stay in line with our vision of “Natural landscape charm, ancient capital cultural soul, international modern appearance”.
- The City of Nanjing is one of the speakers in the Open Conference Sessions at the LUCI Anual General Meeting 2019 in Shanghai. See the programme here
- Learn about the other member cities of LUCI
Photo credits
© City of Nanjing