GoKawiilIn the chill of a London spring night, under overcast skies, iconic Trafalgar Square opens around me. Admiral Nelson rises on his pedestal, the National Gallery rests behind, the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields sits nearby. From the 13th century, the site served as the Royal Mews for hawks and then horses. By 1844, it was a public space at the heart of one of the biggest cities in the world.
Despite the square’s presence through that grand sweep of history, it’s not why I’m here. My interest is far more specific: I want to find out what happens to spaces like this when artificial light, specifically from light-emitting diodes (LEDs), intrudes. My companion tonight is Simon Thorp, a local lighting designer, who crouches in the shadows near Nelson’s spire, light meter in hand. “Two lux,” he reports, “and it’s very comfortable here.” Two lux is 10 to 20 times the illuminance of a full moon. We can see each other clearly, and a nearby sign assures us that closed-circuit television (CCTV) is in operation for safety’s sake.
Light designer Simon Thorp uses a luxmeter to measure the intensity of light emitted by a street lamp in St. James’s Park, London. Luigi Avantaggiato
Trafalgar Square captures the relationship between lighting and darkness that exists in almost every city, suburb, small town, and village around the world. The lighting here is a mishmash of old technologies and new, of shadow and glare, the ornamental gas lamps fronting the National Gallery all but washed out by the LEDs inside modern versions of traditional “brass and glass” fixtures a few meters away—21st-century technology housed in 19th-century designs. The ugly truth of artificial lighting today is that in parts of London, as in many cities around the world, lighting levels are excessive, with unshielded illumination blasting in all directions. And the irony is that too much light invites danger: It creates shadows, impedes our vision, and gives the illusion, without the reality, of safety. Thorp notes that modern CCTV cameras are “pretty great” even at low-light levels, while harsh light makes it hard for both human eyes and digital sensors to see. “The more bad light we add, the more bad light we think we need,” says Thorp. “We can’t see because of the light we’ve added. And it makes areas that were perfectly okay seem darker.” Among the costs of this excess, the most alarming may be its toll on human health (and that of other animals) by disrupting circadian rhythms, impeding the production of melatonin, and contributing to sleep disorders that are tied to every major modern disease. New research shows that increased exposure to blue light from LEDs is having “substantial biological impacts” such as suppression of the sleep hormone melatonin and an increased risk for obesity, certain cancers, and type 2 diabetes.
A panoramic view from the Eiffel Tower looks down on the illuminated Champ de Mars gardens [center] leading toward the École Militaire, with the tall silhouette of the Tour Montparnasse visible on the Paris skyline. Luigi Avantaggiato
I have come to London and Paris—which led the way in the expansion of public street lighting in the 19th century—because they embody both the current enormity of the problem as well as a future certain to be lit by trillions of chips: controllable, tunable, and energy-efficient LEDs. Living with artificial light at night The standard justification for nighttime illumination is public safety. Lighting experts’ term for the phenomenon is “artificial light at night.” While people won’t often admit it, the desire for light at night seems to stem from a primal fear of the dark. Darkness is where the bad guys hide. And if dark is bad and light is good, then more light can only be better. This assumption has guided our use of nighttime light for hundreds of years. And yet, high-lumen output doesn’t necessarily correlate to a reduction in crime, research has found. In other words, if we relied on the data as much as we do our primal anxieties and paused those anxieties long enough to learn how light and darkness interact, our nights would almost certainly be lighted differently—especially now that we have the extraordinary technology that is the light-emitting diode.
A 19th-century gas lamp [white square] manufactured by William Sugg & Co. next to a pedestrian path in Trafalgar Square, along with the architectural floodlighting on the neoclassical facade of the National Gallery, showcase the interplay between modern and historic lighting systems. Luigi Avantaggiato
The Illuminated River artwork for Blackfriars Bridge uses a color scheme that closely complements the red pillar supports that remain from the original Blackfriars Railway Bridge. Luigi Avantaggiato
In fact, this may be the most meaningful potential of LEDs: the ability for a community to control when, where, at what levels, and in which colors its lights shine. A public space like Trafalgar Square could be lit more brightly during rush hour, then dimmed as the night progresses, the lights not only connected to one another but to the surrounding streetlights and commercial lights. Anywhere in the world, LED streetlights could be programmed to rise and fall in brightness depending on the time of night or time of year. They could even be turned off during bird migrations, to reduce the number of birds that are disoriented by the lights and ultimately killed in collisions with reflective and illuminated windows. Up to now, LED public lighting has largely not been part of any comprehensive plan to curtail and control nighttime illumination. Most LED installations have simply replaced older, inefficient “dumb” electric lighting with newer “dumb” LEDs and thus made light pollution worse. The main reason? Because LED lighting is cheaper, we tend to use more of it—a literally shining example of the Jevons paradox. Even as awareness of light pollution grows, we aren’t yet taking advantage of LED technology’s full potential. The good news is that we could start tonight. At DarkSky International, the world’s foremost organization fighting light pollution, CEO and executive director Ruskin Hartley tells me the organization has five principles for responsible outdoor lighting: It should be useful, targeted, low level, controlled, and warm-colored. “They’re enabled because of the capabilities of LEDs,” Hartley says. The technology to control LEDs will be part of the solution. In the olden days of the analog era, a streetlight was either on or off. To change a lighting schedule, you had to physically rewire a circuit. Today, the Digital Addressable Lighting Interface (DALI) protocol turns each luminaire into part of a network, with its own digital address and a driver that reports to a central server. With DALI, the lighting is managed through software rather than physical switches. Unfortunately, most LED streetlights have been deployed without this technology because it costs more. But Paul Drosihn, general manager of the DALI Alliance, says that using such controls makes the LEDs much easier to maintain. Before the new digital protocol, it took an average of nearly three visits to identify, diagnose, and repair a defective luminaire. “Now it’s one,” Drosihn says. “Saving the cost of sending two guys on a cherry picker to replace those [lights] is immeasurable. What I just described to you is pretty much all the utilities need to know.”
The intricate cast-iron understructure of Westminster Bridge glows in vibrant green and teal light as part of the Illuminated River public art project, a color palette selected to echo the green benches of the nearby House of Commons. Luigi Avantaggiato
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