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Planning sustainable urban lighting for biodiversity and society

Abstract

Urban planners continuously face the challenge of reducing artificial lighting to protect biodiversity while ensuring urban residents’ comfort and safety at night. Striking this balance is crucial for supporting urban residents broadly, yet it remains insufficiently explored in current research. Here we integrate remote sensing and ecological modeling to assess species’ requirements around light-pollution reduction with socioeconomic modeling to evaluate human residents’ acceptance of various street-lighting adjustments, aiming to identify the optimal lighting compromises for Montpellier, France, a midsized European city. We show that, depending on the spatial context, both tradeoffs and synergies can emerge when implementing light-pollution-mitigation measures. By integrating results into an RShiny application, we enabled urban planners to prioritize actions for each streetlight. Our findings underscore the importance of tailoring lighting policies to the specific environmental and social context rather than adopting a universal ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach.

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Fig. 1: Land use and land cover in the Montpellier Metropolitan Area (MMA).
Fig. 2: Results for light pollution indicators.
Fig. 3: Estimated baseline ecological stakes and landscape connectivity loss due to light pollution for six groups of species.
Fig. 4: Acceptability score maps for two light pollution mitigation measures in the Montpellier Metropolitan Area.
Fig. 5: Bivariate maps for the measure “extinction from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m.” for public streetlights.

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Data availability

The RShiny ‘SustainLights’ is accessible at https://sustainlight.sk8.inrae.fr/. The data associated with the RShiny app are available via Zenodo at https://zenodo.org/records/14926418 (ref. 51).

Code availability

The LightPollutionToolbox Qgis plugin is available at https://plugins.qgis.org/plugins/LightPollutionToolbox/. The Biodispersal QGIS plugin is available at https://plugins.qgis.org/plugins/BioDispersal/. The RShiny code and its contents are available at https://forgemia.inra.fr/sk8/sk8-apps/mathnum/tetis/sustainlight.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to our many academic colleagues for their fruitful advice and comments on early versions of the study, in particular J. Amsallem, M. Chailloux, A. Sensier, A. Besnard, R. Chakir, S. Challéat, A.-C. Vaissière, A. Pery and R. Crastes dit Sourd. We also thank M. Lenormand for his help and support on the RShiny application development and storage. We thank the naturalists at the LPO, OPIE and Groupe Chiroptère du Languedoc-Roussillon and the experts and citizens who have agreed to take part in the focus groups or the survey. We also thank the MMA elected officials (in particular B. Paternot) and municipal technical staff (in particular D. Guiraudie) whose participation in the research has made this work possible. In relation to this work, L.T., S.P., J.C. and V.D. received support from the Occitanie Region in the READYNOV Project POLLUM (grant no. 7576-24001770 TETIS).

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L.T. drafted most of the initial outline and core initial content of the Article, with C.B., S.P., J.C., L.M., V.D. and M.D. enriching the outline and text with further illustrations, references and clarifications. They also edited the text thoroughly. S.P. and J.C. developed the ecological study with the input of L.M. and the other authors, S.P. and V.D. developed the light-pollution indicators, and C.B, L.T. and M.D. developed the socioeconomic survey and mapping. C.B. developed the RShiny application.

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Correspondence to Léa Tardieu.

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Tardieu, L., Beaudet, C., Potin, S. et al. Planning sustainable urban lighting for biodiversity and society. Nat Cities 2, 518–531 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-025-00245-7

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