Brighter Darkness: LED Streetlights, Public Infrastructure, and Technical Landscapes

Keywords: Landscape, Lighting, Public Utilities, Political Geography, Infrastructure, Public Infrastructure
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 60

Abstract

The installation, distribution, and maintenance of public utilities like power, water, and light have a direct impact on the quality of our environments and our quality of life. Via site visits, interviews, and a review of relevant literature, this paper investigates the recent appearance of extraordinarily powerful bluish purple LED street lamps in American towns and cities and argues their presence sheds (literal) light on infrastructural inequality and the technical landscape by emphasizing over-exaggerations and gaps. It uses these rich, hyper-bright, and cinematic lamps as a framing device to explore how we conceptualize, appreciate, and expect lighting and electrical infrastructure to function in our surroundings. While the distinct color of these street lamps is actually the result of a manufacturing error and not intentional (unlike the infamous blue “suicide lights” installed in Japanese train stations), their high-profile “erroneous” status provokes questions about street lights, their distribution, and their regulation as a technical and communal resource. This analysis details how these lights function in one particular geographical locale while calling for future explorations of public infrastructural utilities to address the imbalance between urban and rural lighting standards.