Lighting special Social housing
seem to be more deserving of a ‘lighting makeover’ than a housing estate that no one from out of town would visit. There are parallels in the commercial environment,
where lighting consultants are invited to do the public spaces, such as reception areas, but the offi ces where people work eight or more hours a day are often simply a matter of calculation and box ticking. Of course, lighting design doesn’t come cheap.
Social housing and other disadvantaged communities have so many demands to meet that lighting is low on the agenda and almost universally utilitarian. There are further implications to this issue. With
so little attention paid to the night-time appearance and design of many environments, why would anyone be encouraged to look after them? As lighting designers, we can see that it would only take a small intervention in terms of lighting to drastically improve the after-dark appearance, help it feel safer and generate pride in the area. So why, when money is being poured into urban regeneration, is my experience of a social housing estate more or less universal across the UK? There is now a wealth of research that shows the
link between lighting and crime: better lighting reduces crime and aids the perception of safety. A recent study by Brandon C Welsh and David P Farrington 2008 (Effects of Improved Street Lighting on Crime) includes an overview of 13 studies, eight in the US and fi ve in the UK. It showed that the positive effect of improved street lighting has been greater in the UK but, more importantly, concluded that improved street lighting is also effi cacious because it increases the feeling of pride, and thereby also informs social control in the neighbourhood.
‘Our progression as a profession should include moving away from city centres to the periphery where people actually live’
The theory is that when local government chooses
to improve conditions in our neighbourhood, for example through improved street lighting, they send a signal that they care about us. This might lead us to have a more positive image
of our neighbourhood, and our neighbourhood will appear better cared for. This in turn strengthens community cohesion and pride. When we become more proud of the place we live in, we also become more observant of each other on an everyday basis. We feel that public space belongs to us all. We develop a greater sense of responsibility and this leads to more social control and reduced night and daytime crime in the area. Public or social housing was originally built and operated by councils to supply well-built homes at
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below-market rents to the local population. As of 2005, 20% of the country’s housing stock is owned by local councils or housing associations. This fi gure doesn’t sound like a great deal until you consider that it accounts for more than 12m people. Social commentators first began to report
on social housing in the large cities during the Industrial Revolution describing squalor, sickness and perceived immorality. Current reports show not much has changed, concluding that the majority of social housing is home to the elderly, those in poverty, migrants and the mentally vulnerable, with estates perceived as centres of high crime. Those living in social housing are a stigmatised sector of society.
Recent consultation on one particular estate
saw residents asking for improvement measures that decreased crime and antisocial behaviour, increased community safety measures, increased the attractiveness of estates and created an overall healthier environment. Lighting can do all this. For this reason we have formed the Social Light
Movement, a philanthropic initiative that has been founded in order to create a network for lighting designers and other interested parties, allowing them to work together to improve lighting for people – particularly those who are unlikely to have access to good quality illumination within their environment. ● The Social Light Movement manifesto is available to download from its page on the social networking site, Facebook.
Light Collective was formed this year by Martin Lupton, former head of BDP Lighting and ex-president of the Professional Lighting Designers Association, and Sharon Stammers, formerly director of Phoenix Large Lightmatters and ex-regional coordinator of the PLDA
High-quality street lighting is the preserve of some town centres but is not much in evidence on housing estates
November 2010 CIBSE Journal
45
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