Lighting design in urban parks - Affording the coexistence of multispecies

Abstract: After darkness falls, lighting enables people’s movements and various everyday activities by providing visibility of surroundings in built environments. While the target of lighting technologies is to support human visual needs in outdoor spaces, responses of wildlife species to electric lighting exposure in urban parks differ and can be disruptive to ecological habitats. To create ecologically inclusive illuminated outdoor environments, more comprehensive design approaches and methods are needed where the coexistence of different living beings can be supported simultaneously in urban green areas. This doctoral project aims to explore how pedestrian lighting in green areas can be reconfigured by considering the interplay between light, material characteristics of built and natural environments, and visual impressions of human users, all while minimising the impact on the survival capabilities of non-human wildlife organisms. Two testbeds with similar urban characters near pedestrian pathways, one located in Sweden and another in Norway, will be used to evaluate the existing lighting conditions and test a new lighting installation during this study.

In the seminar, I will present ongoing works including field studies I have worked on so far, and give an overview of the empirical studies. Two papers upon which the questions and the selection of methods in the planned studies are based will be presented and discussed, and I furthermore wish to discuss particularly how to structure these coming studies.

For the full manuscript, please contact Seren Dincel at dincel@kth.se

The opponents for the papers will be doctoral candidates, Chero Eliassi Sarzeli and Matilde Kautsky.

Supervisors: Meike Schalk (acting supervisor), Ute Besenecker, Daniel Koch and Arne Lowden (Stockholm University).