High-mast lighting as an adequate way of lighting pedestrian paths in informal settlements?

David Michael Kretzer

doi:10.1016/j.deveng.2020.100053

Abstract

Lighting of pedestrian paths fulfils crucial needs for informal settlement dwellers. A common technological approach in some countries to address these needs is to provide high-mast luminaires. In this paper it is shown by computer simulation that those luminaires are not able to create adequate consistent lighting conditions in common forms of informal settlements. Illuminance uniformity requirements are not met within the entire pedestrian path network. Furthermore, a significant part of the light is emitted on the dwellings’ roof and hence results in light pollution.

Highlights

The night-time condition in informal settlements is often charac terised by a lack of light on pedestrian path networks
There fore, the goal of this paper is to quantitatively evaluate the lighting quality created by high-mast luminaires in an informal urban fabric, addressing the research question to what extent do high-mast luminaires constitute an adequate technological solution to light informal settlements with regards to the lighting conditions created?
The high-mast luminaire spacing was changed from 200 m to 100 m to analyse whether the findings of condition no. 1 were caused by a spacing that had been designed too

Summary

Introduction

The night-time condition in informal settlements is often charac terised by a lack of light on pedestrian path networks. This is mainly caused by the deferred provision of infrastructure by the authorities after an informal architectural structure was built. There are a variety of reasons to support the premise that the lighting of pedestrian paths during night-time is beneficial to the residents of the community – both in formal and informal environments. For instance by helping residents of informal settlements to safely find their way to communal toilets after sunset (Musembi, 2015) or by helping them to avoid snakes and stray dogs Informal settlement resi dents service the formal city, where they may represent up to half of the workforce (Dovey and Kamalipour, 2018); adequate lighting conditions are necessary for their daily commute to work

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion