What insights does the ongoing renovation of urban villages offer for the development of urban lighting?

近日，国务院常务会议审议通过《关于在超大特大城市积极稳步推进城中村改造的指导意见》，新一轮城中村改造引起广泛关注。

而在城中村的改造进程中，城市照明的建设占据着十分重要的位置。在未来很长时间内，城市更新将成为照明工程行业一个很大的增量市场，不少城市已落地成功案例。

Urban lighting refers to the illumination and decoration of the urban environment using lighting equipment composed of light sources, luminaires, etc., in a night-time setting; specifically manifested in city squares, streets, parks and green spaces, residential areas, traditional districts in old cities, numerous memorial landmark buildings, and various human activities occurring therein.

The core elements of urban nightscape lighting are not only manifested in aesthetic characteristics but also represent a sensory, subjective ideology, encompassing comprehensive content such as space, time, interaction, activity, and meaning. From a temporal perspective, urban landscapes are divided into daytime and nighttime landscapes. From a content perspective, urban landscapes include three aspects: visual landscape, ecological environment, and behavioral venues.

Road lighting is one of the most dense and numerous municipal facilities in the city, and its role in the urban landscape is self-evident. Specifically, the importance of road lighting can be summarized as follows:

The city's night is plunged into darkness due to insufficient natural lighting, restricting human activity. Street lights create an artificial lighting environment that meets citizens' needs for activity, making the city's nights vibrant. First, they increase visibility at night, enhance safety, and create comfortable social spaces for evening activities and interaction.

Secondly, ensure the safety of vehicles and pedestrians at night, reducing the occurrence of nighttime traffic accidents and criminal or violent incidents. Finally, meet the functional needs of different urban areas, providing lighting conditions for activities in each district and for transportation and communication between them.

Road lighting clarifies the urban structure, organically connects city highlights, expresses the overall night pattern of the city, outlines the city's night silhouette, and produces a good artistic effect.

Urban lighting extends the time for economic activities in the city, promotes tourism and consumption; this is the economic function of lighting for cities. Comparing the economic benefits brought by street lighting in commercial streets such as Wangfujing in Beijing, Nanjing Road in Shanghai, and Shangxiajiu in Guangzhou makes this clear.

According to the "Research Report on Development Trends and Future Prospects of China's Urban Lighting Industry (2022-2029)" released by Guan Yan Research Network, in recent years, with the rapid development of urban construction in China, the scale of cities has continued to expand, old city renovation is booming, and urban lighting construction has also entered a fast lane. The length of roads equipped with street lights and the number of street lights for urban road lighting have continued to grow.

根据数据显示，2020年我国城市道路照明灯数量由2013年的2199.5万盏增加至3048.6万盏，安装路灯道路长度由2013年的25.2万公里增长至38.6万公里。

Currently, enterprises in the lighting engineering sector are actively transforming into the smart city field. Lighting companies are accelerating their move towards "intelligence": transitioning from custom lights to custom light, favoring advanced products with long service life, Wi-Fi support, nanosecond switching, and no flicker; driven by emerging technologies such as 5G, IoT, and AI, lighting companies are accelerating their transformation towards smart lighting.

Currently, enterprises in the lighting engineering sector are actively transforming into the smart city field. Representative enterprises include Hourse, which has created three major business sectors of "Smart Light Art, Smart Cultural Tourism, Smart City Domain" plus the HAO platform service model, forming a "Three Intelligences and One Network" full-system smart service chain.

With the continuous deepening development of smart cities and smart industry, traditional single-function street light poles have lost their competitiveness in front of various smart terminals and cannot meet current development needs.

Based on this, multi-functional street lights will be vigorously developed. They can not only reasonably and orderly utilize urban space and beautify road environments but also integrate street light poles, traffic facility poles, street name signs, and directional signs along the roads, greatly reducing government costs and improving efficiency.

With the further maturity of artificial intelligence technology and the development of 5G technology, fields such as data mining and automatic program design will also be realized in more application areas, further boosting the accelerated development of the smart lighting industry. The number of multi-functional street light constructions will continue to increase, representing an important direction for future development.

Urban renewal projects are large-scale and rich in content, requiring a certain level of professional sectors and systems. We also hope to leverage the strength of design institutions, dealers, various talents, and technologies to fully exert the role of industry integration.

Mr. Wang Tian, Co-Director of Beijing Qingmei Daohe Planning and Design Institute, stated that from an aesthetic perspective, cities possess unique aesthetic value. Cities cultivate art and are themselves art. The beauty of a city is gradually formed with the development of the times. A city is not just a static, objectively existing object composed of material carriers; it changes over time. The beauty of a city accommodates characteristics of different eras, constantly changing and developing with the passage of time.

From cultural tourism night tours to smart cities, then to urban renewal and the development of the night economy, urban lighting construction is constantly adapting to urban development. Facing the development of city construction, lighting enterprises should establish a firm development direction, utilize existing resources to connect upstream and downstream industry chains, and achieve high-quality development for both enterprises and the industry. For example, lighting enterprises can achieve strong partnerships with central state-owned enterprises, share resources, and make appropriate micro-transformations.

Source of this article and images: Guan Yan Tian Xia, AALD, Ximei IoT, Ruisifangda Changzhou Branch No. 1, Urban Light Network, and the Internet