Sustainability assessment of urban lighting systems: The case of Mexico City

Energy management is one of the major concerns of urban sustainability and climate change agendas worldwide. Urban lighting systems are the most visible use of energy in cities due to its importance in the perception of security at night. Nowadays, such systems have developed a high level of complexity, involving users, public policies, and natural resources across different scales. There are several unsustainability symptoms of urban lighting systems in terms of pollution, social injustice, corruption practices, energy inefficiency, climate change, and planetary boundaries destabilization. The main aim of this study is to inform new approaches to managing the tension between historically constructed social values and socio-ecological impacts of urban lighting. Our principal contribution is a novel method to analyze sustainability of lighting systems with a case study of Mexico City, which is one of the most illuminated cities in the globe. To do so, we conceptualize the urban lighting system of Mexico City as a socio-ecological complex system and assess its sustainability using the Adaptive Cycle Metaphor. We identified that Mexico City’s lighting system has transited through five adaptive cycles from 1325 to present with different values of connectedness, potential and resilience whose configurations have led to the current state of unsustainability of the system. Moreover, we present narratives of future sustainability scenarios for the system based on futures studies methods. Finally, we offer leverage points aimed at decision-makers and stakeholders to guide urban lighting systems toward a genuinely sustainable trajectory. The proposed interventions address the fundamental questions of why, for whom, and how light is used, and are articulated around three strategic pillars: restructuring institutions, rethinking how knowledge is created and used in pursuit of sustainability, and reconnecting people to nature.