junctionist
Senior Member
The end might be coming for the lovely traditional "acorn" street light in Toronto. I'm hoping they could be retrofitted with LEDs rather than a switch to fluorescent. On the plus side though, the orange sodium vapour lights will inevitablely become a thing of the past.
Against the environmentalist, aesthetes have no hope
JOHN BARBER
October 1, 2008
Urban aesthetes beware: The environmentalists are back, brandishing more new technology with which to blight our fair city in the name of drear efficiency. What they did to our interiors with their ghastly fluorescent light bulbs they are now doing to our streets. "Low-carbon street lighting" is coming fast, and it ain't pretty.
They will say it is, of course, just as they say that the latest compact fluorescent bulbs emit a more natural light than their dawn-of-the-dead predecessors - something they have been saying for years despite all evidence, while ignoring the fact they contain toxic mercury. (Note to self: Begin hoarding soon-to-be-illegal incandescent bulbs immediately.)
But mere aesthetics - emphasis always on the mere - are sadly beside the point. The environmentalists are unstoppable because, true to their most annoying habit, they are right about this, too.
New technology available from local suppliers could potentially save up to 80 per cent of the current cost of lighting city streets, according to Christopher Tyrrell, president of Toronto Hydro Energy Services. In the new age, failing to embrace it would be downright irresponsible.
Like the Ford Model T, solid-state lighting systems that use diodes instead of filaments and gases are a "disruptive technology" with awesome power to change the world, according to the organizers of a coming Toronto conference on low-carbon lighting. Innovative cities in distant lands have already embraced it, they say. Toronto Hydro will soon begin testing half a dozen alternatives in separate installations throughout the city.
Whatever else happens, according to Mr. Tyrrell, the traditional Toronto street light - the "acorn luminaire" that still sets the absolute quality standard for even, natural street lighting - is toast. Assuming anybody really cares, the best we can hope for in the future is to keep a few retrofitted acorns glowing in the tourist districts.
But you never know: Traditionalists frustrated the first green-inspired assault on the old acorn back in the 1990s, when the case against it was even stronger than it is today.
At the time, the old city of Toronto was the only municipality anywhere still lighting its streets with grossly inefficient incandescent bulbs, which it kept for mere aesthetic reasons: Its streets at night were uniquely gorgeous, and the only efficient alternative at the time - sodium-vapour lights - were then and remain hideous.
With the greens barking for efficiency, the old city pioneered its own disruptive technology: Traditional acorns powered by metal-halide lamps giving off a bright, white light. Tests showed that the new-old rig outperformed all the latest technology available at the time. Installed widely throughout the central city, the metal-halide acorns still manage to recall the soft-lit romance of yore.
But LED lighting is more efficient still, renewing demands for change. And the old Toronto, in which aesthetics sometimes mattered, is a long-forgotten conceit.
Installations elsewhere show that LEDs give off a far more natural light than the highway-style sodium fixtures that still dominate suburban streets. But high cost and the problem of patchy illumination still impede their widespread adoption, according to advocates, as does a bewildering variety of technical standards that obstruct innovation.
The greens want disruption, and they're good at it. For aesthetes, the only hope left is obstruction.
Against the environmentalist, aesthetes have no hope
JOHN BARBER
October 1, 2008
Urban aesthetes beware: The environmentalists are back, brandishing more new technology with which to blight our fair city in the name of drear efficiency. What they did to our interiors with their ghastly fluorescent light bulbs they are now doing to our streets. "Low-carbon street lighting" is coming fast, and it ain't pretty.
They will say it is, of course, just as they say that the latest compact fluorescent bulbs emit a more natural light than their dawn-of-the-dead predecessors - something they have been saying for years despite all evidence, while ignoring the fact they contain toxic mercury. (Note to self: Begin hoarding soon-to-be-illegal incandescent bulbs immediately.)
But mere aesthetics - emphasis always on the mere - are sadly beside the point. The environmentalists are unstoppable because, true to their most annoying habit, they are right about this, too.
New technology available from local suppliers could potentially save up to 80 per cent of the current cost of lighting city streets, according to Christopher Tyrrell, president of Toronto Hydro Energy Services. In the new age, failing to embrace it would be downright irresponsible.
Like the Ford Model T, solid-state lighting systems that use diodes instead of filaments and gases are a "disruptive technology" with awesome power to change the world, according to the organizers of a coming Toronto conference on low-carbon lighting. Innovative cities in distant lands have already embraced it, they say. Toronto Hydro will soon begin testing half a dozen alternatives in separate installations throughout the city.
Whatever else happens, according to Mr. Tyrrell, the traditional Toronto street light - the "acorn luminaire" that still sets the absolute quality standard for even, natural street lighting - is toast. Assuming anybody really cares, the best we can hope for in the future is to keep a few retrofitted acorns glowing in the tourist districts.
But you never know: Traditionalists frustrated the first green-inspired assault on the old acorn back in the 1990s, when the case against it was even stronger than it is today.
At the time, the old city of Toronto was the only municipality anywhere still lighting its streets with grossly inefficient incandescent bulbs, which it kept for mere aesthetic reasons: Its streets at night were uniquely gorgeous, and the only efficient alternative at the time - sodium-vapour lights - were then and remain hideous.
With the greens barking for efficiency, the old city pioneered its own disruptive technology: Traditional acorns powered by metal-halide lamps giving off a bright, white light. Tests showed that the new-old rig outperformed all the latest technology available at the time. Installed widely throughout the central city, the metal-halide acorns still manage to recall the soft-lit romance of yore.
But LED lighting is more efficient still, renewing demands for change. And the old Toronto, in which aesthetics sometimes mattered, is a long-forgotten conceit.
Installations elsewhere show that LEDs give off a far more natural light than the highway-style sodium fixtures that still dominate suburban streets. But high cost and the problem of patchy illumination still impede their widespread adoption, according to advocates, as does a bewildering variety of technical standards that obstruct innovation.
The greens want disruption, and they're good at it. For aesthetes, the only hope left is obstruction.