LIGHTING
BEYOND BRIGHTNESS: WHY WE NEED TO RETHINK LIGHTING
Drawing on Bradstone’ s latest Promoting Safety in the Public Realm whitepaper, Iwona Kossek, director of Ask for Angela, with Jo Roberts, head of product management at Bradstone and Holcim UK, explore how to make smarter lighting choices in public spaces.
As cities seek to create more inclusive, walkable and vibrant public spaces, lighting is increasingly being recognised as a critical component of urban design. And for good reason.
Three-fifths of people feel unsafe in a park or open space after dark, 24 % of men and 37 % of women stop walking in quiet places such as parks or open spaces after dark due to safety concerns, and people feel less safe walking alone in all settings after dark than during the day, with women feeling less safe than men.
But improving safety is not as straightforward as installing more streetlights. Instead, lighting can be used as a powerful tool in creating inclusive, inviting spaces, when choices are paired with strategic thinking.
Putting the nuance into safety Safety in the public realm refers to the collective protection and wellbeing of people using shared spaces, such as streets, squares, parks, transport and town centres.
To understand safety, we must first understand risk, which expands beyond‘ actual’ threats, e. g. crime, violence and accidents, and includes‘ perceived’ threats- which may prevent or change the behaviours of people using public infrastructure and participating in public life.
When exploring possible interventions to these actual or perceived threats, the measures on hand usually fall into two groups: physical and social. Physical measures emerge through placemaking, design, maintenance, surveillance and lighting. Social measures looks like the presence of others, community cohesion activity and space management.
When looking at safety, there is a similar distinction as seen in risk. First is actual safety, which refers to an objective level of risk, supported by data such as accident rates and crime statistics. Though, this data should not be relied on for a complete picture for the safety of an area, as certain crimes are known to be underreported, such as sexual harassment and sexual violence. This is why we need to also consider perceived safety, the subjective
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