Light Pollution Negatively Impacts Citygarden at Night
Busy weekend, the post I’d planned for today will appear later this week. Today I thought I’d share a recent pic from Citygarden.
The bright light on the right is the new Saint Louis University School of Law. I tend to take photos of Citygarden this direction, the other direction the Peabody sign on the Gateway One building is too bright. When Citygarden first opened in 2009 the Peabody name wasn’t on the building, the park was much more pleasant at night. Now the signage is overpowering.
For a future post I’ll try to get a decent nighttime shot to illiterate my point, to contrast with older photos from before the sign went up on the building.
— Steve Patterson
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Its the city garden, the lights of the city are part of the experience.
In urban areas, light “pollution” / light “trespass” depends on one’s priorities. For many urban dwellers, dark = scary or dangerous. And in St. Louis (the city) it appears that most streetlights have received brighter luminaires over the years, which, in most cases, would allow the lights to be spaced further apart, yet the old spacing (appropriate for dimmer lamps) has been maintained. The end result is a relatively high level of ambient lighting, on every city street, in addition to parking lot lighting, security lighting, illuminated signs and, as you noted, light “escaping” from the interiors of multi-story buildings. For many people, that means “safer”, even a more “urban” feeling, and is not viewed as a negative. While I agree with you that there probably is too much exterior lighting, these days, you’re fighting the “you can never be too safe” mindset when it comes to trying to define / reduce / regulate it.
I like the light pollution. Beats the skyline 10-15 years ago. A bigger concern as a downtown city dweller is the human cockroaches, street urchins, waste of human flesh that constantly are trying to shake me down for “spare” money. I had one piece of filth as me for $5 bucks. These degenerates are getting bold. I had plenty to tell this low life & he didn’t like it.
We amateur astronomers have been complaining for years about the light pollution. The International Dark Sky Association has been successful with getting state wide legislation through in both New Mexico and Arizona. Other cities have enacted legislation to have full cutoff fixtures installed with more efficient lighting. Since Ameren technically owns the street light fixtures in St. Louis, they have no interest in either installing the full cutoff fixtures or moving to more efficient lighting