Outdoor Lighting and Crime - Amper

populations continues. Governments, stretched by the difficulties of building transport and
other infrastructure ever further into the surrounding countryside, encourage people to
abandon their detached suburban houses to multi-unit development and move into higher
density accommodation in the city or inner suburbs. Brighter, supposedly safer, lighting may
be one of the incentives, but the generally substantial increase in crime rate with proximity to
the city centre rarely seems to be brought to the attention of those being encouraged to move.
Excessive urban intensification tends to reduce quality of life for existing inhabitants. For
example, transport becomes an increasing problem: it becomes progressively more expensive
to park and garage private cars and traffic jams become more of a permanent feature. Despite
their environmental problems, cars are popular because they allow people to move about with
a degree of rapidity and especially flexibility that often cannot be matched by the use of
public transport, especially when outside the city centre and inner suburbs. Cars add to
quality of life, particularly if the roads are generally not clogged. Although governments
promote public transport and people clamour for improved public transport services, there is a
suspicion that individuals air these views in the hope that others will use public transport and
leave the roads clearer for them. Excessive urbanisation, a city crammed too full of people
and traffic, is probably not what most people want.
The total city population may be able to keep expanding within the existing boundaries for
some time more, but a limit must be reached in due course. The urban centre itself can
expand outwards through the inner suburbs, and upward, but again the process cannot
continue indefinitely. Pressure for alienation of parkland may become intense. Despite fierce
opposition from local residents and conservation groups, parkland alienation may be approved
by the responsible authority, especially if worthy, political or business causes assist
justification. 104 Parkland alienation is almost inevitably accompanied by increased
104 Examples of parkland alienation, just from metropolitan Melbourne in the last 150 years,
include tollways, freeways, roads, tramways, railways, subway and tunnel accesses, schools,
military barracks, housing developments under the guise of athletes’ villages, conservatories
and plant nurseries, art galleries, museums, steam locomotive displays, model railways, model
villages, country children’s accommodation, relocated heritage buildings, exhibition and
convention centres, community centres, sound bowls, rotundas, visitor and tourist information
centres, permanent and temporary car parks, zoos, model farms, sports administration centres,
sporting facilities (a major consumer of public open space), bicycle paths, walking/jogging
tracks, exercise stations, car racing infrastructure, horse and dog racing courses, shrines and
memorials, statues, sculptures, lookouts, adventure playgrounds, electricity sub-stations, highvoltage
transmission pylons, powerlines and poles, pole-mounted and low/inground lights and
floodlights, CCTV cameras, mobile-phone antenna towers, radio antennas, public telephones,
lighthouses, aviation beacons, hospitals, laboratories, observatories, theatres, prisons, agedcare
accommodation, restaurants, cafes, kiosks, barbecue facilities, public change
rooms/showers, toilets, water and gas main shutoffs, fire hydrants, drinking fountains, windpowered
and electric water pumps, underground cabling and pipes accesses, bicycle racks,
fences, traffic barriers, mail boxes and garbage/recycle bins. Additional items seen in parks in
other cities include parliament buildings, concert halls, public libraries, religious buildings,
mausoleums, tombs, cemetaries, indigenous people’s centres, park and ride terminals,
amusement rides, vending machines, bus shelters, police posts, park maintenance depots,
mine poppet heads, quarries and oil pumps. Few of these items are inherently bad, but the net
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