Content Items’ Review in City Lighting Master Plans

Light is essential for life, and it is one of its components. It gives us the ability to see as we receive the most important information around us through our eyes. Eyes could be counted as the most sensitive part of our bodies which are used for gathering about 80% of needed data. On the other hand, we know that light has a great influence on quality of space, emotions, perceptions, the image of a city, and etc. Light and lighting are vital matters of urban life, so that it is not possible for us to envision a life without them. Over the past decades, cities became the origin of 24 hour activities, where unlike old days, nocturnal life as well as daily life continues. Cities are no longer a place which is shut by falling night and waken up by the next day. Their citizens stay up and head into different locations through the night, according to new living conditions. Currently, appropriate lighting for night time is needed in Iran to overcome problems we are facing in cities. Existence of problems such as low-quality urban spaces, high rate of car accidents, criminal acts, low social safety and light pollution should be addressed by experts through conducting precise and practical studies on city lighting. It is expected that importance of urban lighting in improvement of public realm quality, city marketing, citizens’ visual image and urban beautification be more highlighted. Therefore we seek better lighting methods to use for our cities so that we can create a superior townscape. In order to find solutions for problems mentioned above, the lighting master plan is introduced. This plan is crucial for every city to execute proper lighting and results to a profitable environment. Also rendered as an upstream kind of program employed to control and direct every details on urban lighting, it should be viewed as a unified coordinated general plan available for urban spaces. Most cities around the world have already came up with such plans whereas in Iran we still need some extra time and effort to achieve a descent spot. Although the problem is not the light source, it is rather to have a guide to prepare a lighting master plan. In which a detailed review of city lighting master plans and extraction of all indices and items considered essential in process of planning, are viewed as equally very decisive. Of course, we should not forget that such items are general and depend on the context of each plan, it means they are specific for every city and place where unique characteristics, conditions, identity and atmosphere exists. In other words, content analysis of the urban lighting master plans makes it possible to distinguish what should be taken into action. Then it comes to consider the priorities addressed by these plans and solutions offered by them. Thus, knowledge of the content items is a necessary part in preparation of the urban lighting master plan for all the organizations and individuals engaged in this process. Regarding the goal of this paper which is to investigate and collect content items needed in compilation of a city lighting master plan, researcher has tried to gather mentioned items through library research with a practical and scientific approach in mind. This was achieved by studying successful experiences of different cities following by extracting content items. Then a three-part conceptual model is presented which is comprised of information about the city, the structural aspects of urban and urban lighting issues of the city, and ultimately practical suggestions on how to organize planning as expressed in various sections of the plan. Finally, the reason to choose this subject was the significant importance of light and lighting in urban environment. Besides working on this issue and cultivating a scientific culture, was very essential itself. It has been in mind to build a reference for further scientific moves and activities, albeit in a limited time. It is quite clear that Iranian cities, especially metropolitans, suffer from inadequate lighting plans as a quality item of an urban area and one of the cities’ beauty aspects. We cannot deny what has been done till now, but it is certainly time for more. Hopefully, this paper will leave some positive effects to motivate interested experts and researchers to look for innovative solutions and ideas as the case requires.