Outdoor Lighting and Crime - Amper

oads were lit adequately for pedestrians. Twenty eight percent said they did not go
walking after dark. Eighty seven percent of respondents said that they had not been
prevented from going anywhere in the City at night through lack of street lighting.”
“A question relating to safety in the Central City was included in the 1994 and 1996
survey. Results showed that the majority of respondents (69 percent) did not feel
safe by themselves in the Central City at night. Parts of the City frequently
identified as unsafe at night were Cathedral Square, Latimer Square and Manchester
Street. Only 11 percent indicated that they felt unsafe alone in the Central City
during the day.”
Presumably there has been no attempt to optimise the existing total amount of ambient light in
Christchurch to achieve minimum fear of crime at night, so there appears to be some scope for
using the available light more effectively, including the light that is directly radiated above the
horizontal at present. It is difficult to escape the impression that most cities in the developed
countries are substantially overlit at night, and that large reductions in their usage of lighting
could be made for the purpose of reducing crime while containing or perhaps even reducing
the fear of crime. The impact that this might have on traffic safety does not appear to be a
problem, judging from the survey results, but obviously the issue would need close
examination and prediction of acceptable outcomes on all criteria before any lighting
reduction and optimisation program is put into practice. City officials might usefully consider
pilot schemes, at least until prior experience locally or elsewhere indicates there is no further
need for them.
5.6 SEEING MELBOURNE IN A DIFFERENT LIGHT
Readers from elsewhere may find that the following parochial experiences have parallels
closer to their own homes.
5.6.1 Railway stations
As mentioned in Part 1, values of over 450 lux peak and 300 lux typical resulted from
relighting of Melbourne’s railway stations as one of several supposed crime-prevention
measures described by Carr and Spring (1993). The lighting ‘improvements’ in and around
stations have taken place since 1993, with the Premier of Victoria claiming in a 1994 press
release that the new lighting would “turn night into day”. He was right there. The glare and
steep illumination gradients cause visibility losses in the vicinity, particularly for elderly
persons and others with increased intraocular light scatter. Despite big increases in regular
police assigned to transit duties (eg 50 to 230 in the last two years), the crime problem has
become so much worse in the last decade that an account of it in a broadsheet newspaper
occupied a page and a half (The Sunday Age 2003). Some pertinent extracts follow, with
additions by the writer in square brackets:
“Unstaffed railway stations have become no-go zones for fearful commuters turned
off by the stations’ shabby appearances, isolation and groups of youths who use
them as meeting points and drinking venues.” [This is despite the intense lighting,
ten to twenty times brighter than New Yorkers needed in experiments to feel nearly
as safe as in daylight (Boyce et al. 2000).]
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