Outdoor Lighting and Crime - Amper

The lighting decorations and logos often present on the tops of multi-story buildings should
not escape any of these limitations. They are often a profligate source of light trespass and
energy wastage, and serve little purpose beyond self-aggrandisement of the building owners
or tenants. It would appear justifiable to go further and ban them altogether as unnecessary
contributors to the crime rate.
Illuminated advertising signs and other lit displays in general have a propensity to put half of
their available light output more or less uselessly above the horizontal. This effect is not easy
to eliminate in any of the three most common types: floodlit opaque billboards, ‘neon’or
‘electric’ signs and internally lit translucent signs. Much more effort needs to go into making
the light output directional, aimed at where the sign is supposed to be seen from, while still
complying with luminance restrictions such as those suggested above. The outdoor
advertising industry must adapt to new knowledge and community priorities.
The largest peak shown in Figure 15 is from a giant advertising sign lit by enough high
intensity discharge lamps to illuminate a medium size outdoor sports field at national
competition level. The actual peak illuminance it produces on the ground is much more than
the mean value for both sides of the street shown in the figure, and hundreds of times greater
than the illuminance typically produced by streetlights. Spill light directly emitted from the
floodlamps and light reflected from the sign itself disrupts the function of street lighting over
thousands of square metres in the vicinity. It is a major source of glare. It appears to be a
long-term health risk to nearby residents because of potential endocrine disruption. Its
existence is testament to the failure of self-regulation and the shortcomings of the planning
processes that allowed its installation. Now it can be seen as a likely substantial contributor
to to the level of crime in central Melbourne. In due course, calculations may be possible as
to the number of extra crimes that it and other signs have helped generate in the area,
providing new opportunities for litigation by victims.
Large outdoor video screens are like lit signs in terms of being large area sources of bright
light. They are effective in attracting crowds. Their effects on illumination at street level at
night can be substantial. They need to be subject to appropriate controls if they are to be
allowed at all in future. Compliance with the limits in Table 12 could be appropriate.
Brightly lit shop window displays and lighting from awnings and verandas can also disrupt
uniformity of illumination provided by streetlights. An effective way of dealing with this
problem would be to limit the total illuminance in any plane anywhere within say 1 m of the
pedestrian pavement to say 120% of that produced by the public lighting alone. This
suggested restriction might dismay retailers, but for individuals it would be far better than
being assaulted or robbed even once.
The commercial world has to ensure that it will not cause any further social damage with its
use of lighting and light-emitting displays. It might be thought that moderation should be
applied only to obvious lighting hotspots, but endless arguments could thereby result about
how such things are defined. Universally applied quantitative restrictions appear to be the
only fair way of producing a ‘level playing field’ and the necessary moderation of outdoor
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