Lighting has been getting ridiculously cheaper. And for the most part we seem to be not taking advantage of that positive externality: reducing crime through better lighting. This has been battle-tested as one of the effective ways for public security, see Chalfin, Hansen, Lerner & Parker (2022), an RCT in NYC public housing finding ~36% reductions in nighttime outdoor index crimes from added street lighting. Many, many major cities still haven’t copied this at the right levels!
But we’re also getting substantially negative externalities of bright lighting. Office buildings that never turn off their lights because why would they care. Apropos the new office building that just opened next to my housing. This may alimentate NIMBY spirits in me, God forbid. Kyba et al. (2017) document that Earth’s artificially lit outdoor area grew 2.2% per year from 2012 to 2016, with the LED transition producing a rebound effect instead of getting savings. Jevons paradox and such.
Also, this has all sorts of annoyances. I think malls, pharmacies, and hospitals have all become much brighter since my childhood. I may be more sensorially overloaded than most people, but this does meaningfully affect my qualia, so much that Pigou himself would collect taxes from the pharmacies with dozens and dozens of LEDs, while Coase would advocate that I have the natural property right of not being assaulted with that much lumen while buying a Tylenol. This does affect wellbeing of more than just me (Cho et al. 2015). But lightly enough, ha, to not be a topic of discussion.
Lighting has been getting ridiculously cheaper. And for the most part we seem to be not taking advantage of that positive externality: reducing crime through better lighting. This has been battle-tested as one of the effective ways for public security, see Chalfin, Hansen, Lerner & Parker (2022), an RCT in NYC public housing finding ~36% reductions in nighttime outdoor index crimes from added street lighting. Many, many major cities still haven’t copied this at the right levels!
But we’re also getting substantially negative externalities of bright lighting. Office buildings that never turn off their lights because why would they care. Apropos the new office building that just opened next to my housing. This may alimentate NIMBY spirits in me, God forbid. Kyba et al. (2017) document that Earth’s artificially lit outdoor area grew 2.2% per year from 2012 to 2016, with the LED transition producing a rebound effect instead of getting savings. Jevons paradox and such.
Also, this has all sorts of annoyances. I think malls, pharmacies, and hospitals have all become much brighter since my childhood. I may be more sensorially overloaded than most people, but this does meaningfully affect my qualia, so much that Pigou himself would collect taxes from the pharmacies with dozens and dozens of LEDs, while Coase would advocate that I have the natural property right of not being assaulted with that much lumen while buying a Tylenol. This does affect wellbeing of more than just me (Cho et al. 2015). But lightly enough, ha, to not be a topic of discussion.