My gut sense is that Lawrence and Al may be right. I am profoundly conflicted by the whole "light up the night" approach to urban crime.
As a country boy, I deeply value darkness. I like many things about city life -- that's why I chose it as an adult -- but its lighting addiction is way overdone, and getting even more excessive over time. Also, unnecessary burning of bulbs is destroying the entire planet, rather rapidly. We face larger problems than "Might I be mugged?" during our lifespans, and global warming is one of them. As for crime prevention, eyes that swiftly adapt to the dark after nightfall are stronger and safer than eyes that are chronically dazzled by streetlights. So I think today's American cities are too bright and we should cut back on that. But "perception of safety" is a virtue in itself. Even when it is mistaken, it takes a psychological toll, which in turn affects other real values: the value of your real estate, the cost of your insurance, the willingness of all sorts of others to interact with you for business or for pleasure when their chief source of information is your address. And if you suffer from bad press on crime, brighter streets absolutely will change that. -- Tony West as the head of the University's own Center for Criminology (Lawrence Sherman) pointed out in a published study a few years back, evidence is strong that lighting has an effect on the perception of safety but is lacking on whether it actually deters crime (that is, some studies suggest that it does, others suggest that it doesn't, and a few even suggest that it may serve a facilitating rather than a debilitating role). Al Krigman
