It’s always fun when someone throws a new phrase into the ever-expanding lexicon of lighting terms, and I’m grateful to Nona Schulte-Römer, senior researcher at Humboldt University, Berlin for introducing ‘Invisible Infrastructure’ to me – to us, I suppose.
I met Nona while co-hosting a podcast on Restoring Darkness, an initiative developed by my friends in Toronto. Michael Colligan fronts a podcast series from there called Get A Grip on Lighting and we chat regularly, so I was more than happy to join him as co-host to talk about Restoring Darkness and learning to do better when it comes to controlling Artificial Light At Night (ALAN).
Learn more about what Michael and the team are up to by clicking on the logos:
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Nona studied approaches to innovative LED night-time lighting for her PhD, looking at two specific projects in Germany (Berlin) and France (Lyon). Different approaches and different attitudes led to very different results. From that research, Nona gives us the term ‘Invisible Infrastructure‘.
To appreciate where Nona’s argument is coming from, we need to look at that word ‘invisible’ – can you see it?
‘Invisible’ does not mean that something is not there. That should be obvious – as clear as day – but not if it’s something that you can’t see . . .
The primary definitions all relate to things like ‘unable to be seen‘; ‘impossible to see‘; ‘incapable by nature of being seen‘; ‘not perceptible by vision‘. All these definitions make out that the invisible object has gone out of its way not be perceived visually. But there’s another meaning of invisible, and this is the one that we’re talking about here: ‘not perceptible or discernible by the mind‘. Ah – now I see . . . or not. We’re talking about my car keys; I know that they are there, but I can’t see them; they are, to all intents and purposes, invisible.
Like street lighting.
Maybe its because most of us have so much external stimuli coming into our heads every waking minute, that we elect not to pay attention to things that don’t alter much. Street lighting is one of those things that rarely changes. This is a problem for us.
We notice our street lighting when something changes . . . and we usually complain about it. The human default.
The two projects that Nona was investigating concerned the introduction of LED sources into the urban environment. In one instance, the intention was to celebrate the changes and improvements that LEDs could provide, in the other it was to ensure that everything stayed the same, even though an entirely new method of illumination was being proposed. The issue in both cases was the lack of awareness amongst the general public, set against the assumptions and concerns (prejudices?) of special interest community groups. The question arises; how do we make our infrastructure ‘visible’ to the broader community in order that we can talk about it.
This issue comes at a vitally important time for us as lighting planners, makers, installers and and users – I think that covers just about everyone. The recent ROLAN conference (Responsible Outdoor Lighting At Night) called upon everyone to reassess our relationship to night-time illumination. Specifically, we need to use far less of it; we need to control it much better; we need to use it ONLY when we need it.
Street lighting is a shibboleth that gets hauled out whenever bad things happen on our streets at night. The ;police will ask for higher light levels; the popular press will demand that the government support the police demands and see that lighting levels increase. No one will ask the simple question; does light level make any difference to street violence? Because, as far as we know, there is NOTHING in the data to suggests that there is any correlation. And yet – the same argument rumbles on year in, year out . . .
The conclusion of Nona’s thesis is that we can only make inroads into the current situation by addressing the issue in small incremental steps. Making huge changes across the entire population leads to general unrest and the kind of things that elected officials inevitably run away from. But if we can find projects in discreet spaces where change can be explored and reviewed, then we might create openings for better discussion and awareness.
And that sounds good to me.
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A final note of warning
We’ve concentrated on the adjective, but haven’t looked at the noun. What do we get out of ‘infrastructure’? Does ‘infrastructure’ only relate to the physicality of things – like street lights? Or can it relate to the decisions taken that result in physical installations? When we plan ‘infrastructure‘ we choose an approach and we follow a course that results in the physical expression of that infrastructure decision. Where does infrastructure start and stop?
Living in the countryside, I like the idea that the villages are, in the main, unlit. This is also ‘invisible infrastructure’ – not because there is no lighting installation, but because the local people choose to embrace the lack of night-time lighting. It is a positive decision that the local street lighting infrastructure should include NO LIGHTING. It is not a lack of illumination (a negative) that needs to be corrected; its a positive decision that roadways should remain unlit. Physical infrastructure is the outcome of a policy decision and it is mutable. So we have to be ready to ensure that changes are only made with our approval and not just because someone sees a lack of light as anything other that a gap waiting to be filled.
. By the way, if you’re interested to read Nona’s Doctoral Thesis, and I certanly recommend it, its available to download .
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