Shedding Light on Living Environments: A Communication Project on the Balance Between Light and Darkness for Sustainable Urban Development

The balance between light and darkness is a fundamental condition for life, and well-designed lighting environments are crucial for sustainable development of our cities. In the Nordic cities, where darkness characterizes large parts of the year, light is a particularly central issue. Lighting contributes to safety, security, and accessibility in public spaces, which strengthens equality, inclusion, and democratic influence. 

At the same time, artificial light negatively affects ecosystems and biodiversity – and light pollution distances people from the night sky and the qualities of darkness. The balance between light and darkness in cities is a central sustainability issue that is growing in importance as artificial light grow globally each year.

Light as Key to Well-Designed Living Environments

The project explores the role of light in the built environment – as a tool for addressing various societal challenges such as social inclusion, biodiversity, and light pollution. Since light moves without boundlessly, broad collaboration is needed to create sustainable lighting environments that protect both people and nature. To achieve this, collaboration between different actors in the city is essential – as well as coordination on municipal, regional, and national levels.

The aim is for research-based knowledge on lighting to be applied in practice, contribute to public value and strengthen the awarensess of lighting as tool for sustainable development. Light is an evolving field in several ways where research is making advances – and we are learning to visualize it in order to plan, design and build resiliently and sustainably in collaboration.

Social Inclusion and Biodiversity

The aim is to increase awarness of the significance of lighting in creating environments that support both humans and nature. The project communicates and makes available research results from natural sciences, design, and organisational studies, to strengthen collaboration and contribute to the UN Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, with focus on:

Goal 10: Reduced inequalities
Promote social, economic, and political inclusion.
Goal 11: Sustainable cities and communities
Promote a strong national and regional development planning.
Goal 15: Life on land
Protect biodiversity and natural habitats.

Develope and Establish New Forms of Collaboration

The project develops 3D and 2D tools – in Gothenburg’s Digital Twin and as planning tools in workshops – to support collaboration on site-specific lighting. The goal is to create high-quality living environments throughout all hours of the day and night.

The work includes:

• develop and test tools that describe and visualize trade-offs in urban environments when dark
• increase knowledge and understanding of the importance of both light and darkness in urban development processes
• contribute to the development in practice and establishing of new forms of collaboration between different actors

The creative transdisciplinary process involves experts in architecture, design, lighting, and visualization. Through interorganizational collaboration in workshops, seminars and demonstrations, scenarios where the qualities of light and darkness meet are illustrated, staged and discussed.

About the Research Programme

The project is part of a long-term research programme that follows the City of Gothenburg’s urban development administrations. The programme focuses on collaboration and the material of light in sustainable urban development – through policy work, method development, light art interventions and innovation projects, including in Gothenburg’s Digital Twin, film production and workshop tools. 

Read more on The City’s Collaboration Process on the Role of Light in Sustainable Urban Development.