This week, I was at the Lighting Urban Community International annual meeting, in Montpellier, France. It was a fantastic experience to sit in a room full of people who work professionally on lighting, and hear speaker after speaker talk about everything their communities are doing to combat #LightPollution.
A lighting industry guy sitting next to me remarked after the first day "This meeting made me realize we're going to have to prepare new marketing materials".
A thread with highlights (1/)
In France, over 10,000 communities turn off their streetlights late at night (typically from 11-6 or 12-5), and Montpellier and surrounding towns are no exception.
In response to a question about the possible dangers of crime, a (male) representative of the city said (I'm summarizing) that in order to fix the problem of violence in the city, we should address the actual cause (asshole men), rather than put up lights.
#DestroyThePatriarchy
#LightPollution
(2/)
Today in a workshop I played an interesting "educational game" that's designed to get policymakers to think about tradeoffs and decision making regarding light.
I enjoyed the experience and the perspectives of my co-players. But at one point when I suggested giving priority to turning off lights in a park for ecological reasons, a lighting designer said "what do you mean? It's an urban park, there isn't anything living there!"
😱 ðŸ˜
#LightPollution
#InsectApocalypse
#Ecology
#Urbanism
(3/)
There was a talk from the street lighting team from Los Angeles about solar lighting. Before the talk I was like "WTF? LA is in a country with reliable grid electricity. Why on Earth would they use solar lighting?"
The extremely depressing answer: copper thieves ðŸ˜
(4/)
Overall, the conference was an amazing experience for me. After so many years of being looked at weirdly by lighting people for talking about #LightPollution, it was absolutely astounding to see a room full of professionals taking it entirely seriously, pushing for "Right light, right time, right place", and emphasizing that in many cases, the best thing to do is not to install any light at all.
(5/6)
Last post just to say that Montpellier is a cool town, and I would forgive the residents in this building if they happen to believe that "it's balconies all the way down!"
(6/6)
Christopher Kyba