Book Award Finalist for Urban Design Group Awards 2020 Lighting has the power to illuminate and enhance our experience within the built environment. The light that enables people to travel around their neighbourhood or their city; the light which they see themselves and their neighbourhood under. Research into the effects of urban lighting on behaviour, environmental psychology and social interaction is developing at a rapid rate. Yet, despite the affect it has on our daily lives, the practical application of this research is a relatively untapped resource. This book explores the needs and experiences of people at night and how these can be addressed by public lighting. It will give readers the confidence to develop more sophisticated lighting plans and add value to their projects. Case studies provide in-depth analysis of real-life projects and will help the reader to understand lighting designers’ own experiences, including post-installation observations. Written in an accessible style by an array of experts, this is an essential book for practitioners, academics and students alike, that will enable you to put the research in to practice and develop better lighting for better places.

After decades "in the shadows", urban lighting is re-emerging as a matter of public debate. Long-standing truths are increasingly questioned as a confluence of developments affects lighting itself and the way it is viewed. Light has become an integral element of place-making and energy-saving initiatives alike. Rapidly evolving lighting technologies are opening up new possibilities, but also posing new challenges to planners, and awareness is growing that artificial illumination is not purely benign but can actually constitute a form of pollution. As a result, public policy frameworks, incentives and initiatives are undergoing a phase of innovation and change that will affect how cities are lit for years to come. The first comprehensive compilation of current scientific discussions on urban lighting and light pollution from a social science and humanities perspective, Urban Lighting, Light Pollution and Society contributes to an evolving international debate on an increasingly controversial topic. The contributions draw a rich panorama of the manifold discourses connected with artificial illumination in the past and present – from early attempts to promote new lighting technologies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to current debates on restricting its excessive usage in public space and the protection of darkness. By bringing together a cross-section of current findings and debates on urban lighting and light pollution from a wide variety of disciplines, it reflects that artificial lighting is multifaceted in its qualities, utilisation and interpretation. Including case studies from the United States, Europe, and the UK, Urban Lighting, Light Pollution and Society is one of the first to take a serious assessment of light, pollution, and places and is a valuable resource for planners, policy makers and students in related subjects.

This “superb history” of artificial light traces the evolution of society—“invariably fascinating and often original . . . [it] amply lives up to its title” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). In Brilliant, Jane Brox explores humankind’s ever-changing relationship to artificial light, from the stone lamps of the Pleistocene to the LEDs embedded in fabrics of the future. More than a survey of technological development, this sweeping history reveals how artificial light changed our world, and how those social and cultural changes in turn led to the pursuit of more ways of spreading, maintaining, and controlling light. Brox plumbs the class implications of light—who had it, who didn’t—through the centuries when crude lamps and tallow candles constricted waking hours. She identifies the pursuit of whale oil as the first time the need for light thrust us toward an environmental tipping point. Only decades later, gas street lights opened up the evening hours to leisure, which changed the ways we live and sleep and the world’s ecosystems. Edison’s bulbs produced a light that seemed to its users all but divorced from human effort or cost. And yet, as Brox’s informative portrait of our current grid system shows, the cost is ever with us. Brilliant is infused with human voices, startling insights, and timely questions about how our future lives will be shaped by light

This book focuses on light-emitting diode (LED) lighting, mainly for the commercial production of horticultural crops in plant factories and greenhouses with controlled environments, giving special attention to: 1) plant growth and development as affected by the light environment; and 2) business and technological opportunities and challenges with regard to LEDs. The book contains more than 30 chapters grouped into seven parts: 1) overview of controlled-environment agriculture and its significance; 2) the effects of ambient light on plant growth and development; 3) optical and physiological characteristics of plant leaves and canopies; 4) greenhouse crop production with supplemental LED lighting; 5) effects of light quality on plant physiology and morphology; 6) current status of commercial plant factories under LED lighting; and 7) basics of LEDs and LED lighting for plant cultivation. LED lighting for urban agriculture in the forthcoming decades will not be just an advanced form of current urban agriculture. It will be largely based on two fields: One is a new paradigm and rapidly advancing concepts, global technologies for LEDs, information and communication technology, renewable energy, and related expertise and their methodologies; the other is basic science and technology that should not change for the next several decades. Consideration should be given now to future urban agriculture based on those two fields. The tremendous potentials of LED lighting for urban agriculture are stimulating many people in various fields including researchers, businesspeople, policy makers, educators, students, community developers, architects, designers, and entrepreneurs. Readers of this book will understand the principle, concept, design, operation, social roles, pros and cons, costs and benefits of LED lighting for urban agriculture, and its possibilities and challenges for solving local as well as global agricultural, environmental, and social issues.

This book advocates an approach to lighting design that focuses on how people experience illumination. Lighting Design in Shared Public Spaces contextualises light, dark and lighting design within the settings, sensations, ideas and imaginaries that form our understandings of ourselves and the world around us. The chapters in this collection bring a new perspective to lighting design, arguing for an approach that addresses how lighting is experienced, understood and valued by people. Across a range of new case studies from Australia, Germany, Denmark, and the United Kingdom, the authors account for lighting design’s crucial role in shaping our dynamic and messy experiential worlds. With many turning to innovative ethnographic methodologies, they powerfully demonstrate how feelings of comfort, safety, security, vulnerability, care and well-being can configure in and through how people experience and manipulate light and dark. By focusing on how lighting is improvised, arranged, avoided and composed in relation to the people and things it acts upon, the book advances understandings of lighting design by showing how improved experiences of the built environment can result from more sensitive and context-specific illumination. The book is intended for social scientists who are interested in the lit or sensory world, as well as designers, architects, urban planners and others concerned with how the experience of light, dark and lighting might be both better understood and implemented in our shared public spaces.

A stunningly photographed examination of the roadside icons that dot America's landscape. Lost America celebrates the boom-to-bust towns, aircraft bone yards, and filling stations of days past that were sacrificed at the altars of speed and technology and relegated to windswept desert plains and abandoned fields. The eye-catching and memorable photography is complemented with a succinct text history that details the rise and fall of each subject. The result is an impressive tour of an America still standing, yet largely forgotten.

This book explores new criteria and characteristics for integrating human psychology in the design of modern urban lighting. It identifies a new area of lighting design research and practice that focuses on the nocturnal urban experience in terms of people’s emotional, cognitive and motivational perceptions to achieve more accessible, sociable and sustainable cities. In turn, the book compares new tools and research methodologies for tackling complex issues concerning the ties between lighting, people and the city. Moreover, it presents a series of case studies to provide an in-depth understanding of the influence of urban lighting in terms of luminous atmosphere perception, positive social affect, social enhancement, accessibility and hospitability. Lastly, the book proposes a multidisciplinary qualitative and quantitative methodology for assessing the spatial experience of outdoor lighting.

Make the world your studio! Capture the bustle and beauty of life in your town. Experience life as only an artist can! Join the rapidly growing, international movement of artists united by a passion for drawing on location in the cities, towns and villages where they live and travel. Packed with art and advice from Marc Taro Holmes, artist and co-founder of Urbansketchers.org, this self-directed workshop shows you how to draw inspiration from real life and bring that same excitement into your sketchbook. Inside you'll find everything you need to tackle subjects ranging from still lifes and architecture to people and busy street scenes. • 15 step-by-step demonstrations cover techniques for creating expressive drawings using pencil, pen and ink, and watercolor. • Expert tips for achieving a balance of accuracy, spontaneity and speed. • Practical advice for working in the field, choosing subjects, coping with onlookers, capturing people in motion and more. • Daily exercises and creative prompts for everything from improving essential skills to diverse approaches, such as montages, storytelling portraits and one-page graphic novels. Whether you are a habitual doodler or a seasoned artist, The Urban Sketcher will have you out in the world sketching from the very first page. By completing drawings on the spot, in one session, you achieve a fresh impression of not just what you see, but also what it feels like to be there . . . visual life stories as only you can experience them.

While designers possess the creative capabilities of shaping cities, their often-singular obsession with form and aesthetics actually reduces their effectiveness as they are at the mercy of more powerful generators of urban form. In response to this paradox, Designing Urban Transformation addresses the incredible potential of urban practice to radically change cities for the better. The book focuses on a powerful question, "What can urbanism be?" by arguing that the most significant transformations occur by fundamentally rethinking concepts, practices, and outcomes. Drawing inspiration from the philosophical movement known as Pragmatism, the book proposes three conceptual shifts for transformative urban practice: (a) beyond material objects: city as flux, (b) beyond intentions: consequences of design, and (c) beyond practice: urbanism as creative political act. Pragmatism encourages us to consider how we can make deeper and more systemic changes and how urbanism itself can be a design strategy for such transformations. To illuminate how these conceptual shifts operate in vastly different contexts through analysis of transformative urban initiatives and projects in Belo Horizonte, Boston, Cairo, Karachi, Los Angeles, New Delhi, and Paris. The book is a rare integration of theory and practice that proposes essential ways of rethinking city-design-and-building processes, while drawing critical lessons from actual examples of such processes.