Tim Attwood wrote:
>>  Examining the pattern of night illumination here it feels like the
>> principle by which they put the lights is only "is there enough 
>> illumination
>> here? No? Let's put a couple of lights more", without the slightest regard
>> about useless lighting which only consumes electricity (which the city has
>> to pay!) and causes light pollution.
>>  Just in the close vicinity of where I live I can see that they could
>> remove at least half of all the lights without affecting considerably
>> the illumination. I don't know how much the city has to pay for light
>> illumination, but I assume that if it was cut in half for the entire
>> city it wouldn't be a small saving annually.
> 
> Less lights = more crime.  Increased crime can cost a city more money
> than they'd save on the light bill.  There's arguments about that of course,
> but the bottom line is that the incarceration costs are so high that even
> a very small drop in the crime rate pays the light bill.

I think that saying that less lights = more crime is too much of a 
simplification.  As the article mentions:

"The lighting near the mailboxes was of a type that Crawford calls 

walkway behind the boxes into an impenetrable void."

And

"Much so-called security lighting is designed with little thought for how 

Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, has concluded that lighting is 
effective in preventing crime mainly if it enables people to notice 



both counts, as do all-night lights installed on isolated structures or on 

doors). A burglar who is forced to use a flashlight, or whose movement 
triggers a security light controlled by an infrared motion sensor, is much 
more likely to be spotted than one whose presence is masked by the 


Lance.

thezone - thezone.firewave.com.au

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