Outdoor Lighting and Crime - Amper

Log 10 (ILLUMINANCE, lux)
FIGURE 15. DRUGS CRIME AND LIGHT IN BOURKE STREET
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0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700
BOURKE STREET NUMBER
Figure 15. Arithmetic means of north and south footpath horizontal plane illuminances for
street numbers along Bourke Street, Melbourne, at night in July 2002. The vertical scale is
logarithmic. The triangle symbols show the street numbers recorded by police in serious drug
offence arrests for the year 2000 (redrawn from Figure 7.10a of DCPC 2001). The large peak
near number 150 is from the brightly lit entrance of a hostel and that at 260 is from an
intensely lit billboard covering about 7 storeys on a corner building. Typically, streetlights
contribute less than 10 lux to the totals (1 on the vertical scale). Intersections have multiple
streetlights. The bulk of the light between intersections comes from awning lights, shop
windows, escaping indoor light, advertising signs and decorative lighting. The intersection
with Russell Street is between numbers 174 and 180: there were no arrests at or close to this
gap. Individual shops predominate along Bourke Street to about number 300, followed by
major department stores and then an increasing number of office blocks. The street side
ambiguity prevents definite identification, but some of the crime locations appear to be near
fast-food places that have bright internal and external lighting. Most of the others appear to
be near brightly lit shops or bright shop window displays. Bourke Street, with 17 174
recorded crimes including drugs crime from 1995 to 2000, was the city’s most prevalent
location for recorded crimes. A little further east (to the left on the horizontal axis) from
numbers 1 and 2 is Parliament House, floodlit to about 115 lux (over 2 on the vertical scale),
measured in the vertical plane.
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