Cities and their urban lighting partners need to share about how to minimise light pollution and find better harmony between light and darkness in the city.
Urban lighting has many positive impacts, but also negative side effects. Light pollution (light clutter, sky glow, light trespass, glare…) is a growing issue worldwide. It impacts all light sensitive species, people and animals alike.
The challenges of the future require a major change in mindset. We need to reconsider existing public and private lighting policies, to allow more customised lighting scenarios that respond to our needs with as little light as possible.
Created in: 2021
Led by: City of Jyväskylä
Main objectives
How is light pollution regulated, handled, and controlled in our cities? What is the main cause of the problem and why?
Meetings of this working group aim to better understand main challenges, collect case studies, and share news in this field to ultimately identify what actions can be undertaken.
Working Group activities
2023
- In April, the LUCI Network adoped the “Declaration for the Future of Urban Lighting” with one of the 7 goals entitled: Minimising light pollution for all living beings. The thematic chapter “A cities’ approach to reducing light pollution” was created by the working group during several co-creation sessions and cowriting. A real joint effort!
- Two meetings took place: in Jyväskylä (March) and Tallinn (September). The theme of the year was: Dark infrastructures – preserving darkness and saving energy. During these meetings, several experts presented their projects, approaches and the progress they’ve made: Helsinki, Leipzig, Jyväskylä, Geneva, Concepto, Amsterdam, and the University of Oulu.
- The City of Tallinn hosted a WG meeting at the occasion of the Tallinn Urban Lighting Seminar Light Pollution in Focus, a seminar in cooperation with Taltech University, with high level expertise on different aspects of light pollution, the challenges to measure it, as well as a survey to collect the opinions of citizens on the topic. LUCI members also explored the medieval old city of Tallin by night, with a new lighting masterplan, and visited the measuring laboratory. An intense 2,5 days of knowledge exchange to better understand the impact of light pollution and ways to combat it!
- LUCI conducted a Short Survey to collect information on the regulations and tools used by cities to minimise light pollution. 20 cities answered and shared their practices. Analysis will be shared with the network in an upcoming publication.
- LUCI accompanied students from INSA, the Technical University of Lyon, in a Research and Development Initiation Project (PIRD). The students produced detailed monographs on three cities involved in the fight against light pollution: Amsterdam, Strasbourg and Tallinn. They compared possible avenues for action to prevent light pollution, as well as the role of users in this process.
LUCI cities members involved
Amsterdam, City of London Corporation, Geneva, Ghent, Glasgow, Gothenburg, Helsinki, Leipzig, Montpellier, Reykjavík, Seoul, Tallinn, Tartu
Photo credits
©Rami Saarikorpi; ©LUCI Association