A recent article in SmartCitiesWorld.net argues that smart streetlighting should be valued not just for illumination but as a strategic digital platform that can drive safety, sustainability, operational savings across many municipal departments, as well as new revenue for cities.
Streetlighting is one of the most pervasive, upgrade-ready assets that cities own, capable of hosting sensors, communications, and computing that extend far beyond light output. When decision-makers frame projects around “beyond illumination” benefits, lighting upgrades become easier to justify financially and politically.
Traditional ROI for streetlighting focused on energy and maintenance savings, especially through LED retrofits and controls. Now, the “new ROI” includes public safety improvements, environmental gains, citizen experience, and enabling smart-city services such as traffic optimization and incident response.
Connected, controllable streetlights are described as foundational smart-city infrastructure because they are already distributed, powered, and located where data is most valuable—on streets and in neighborhoods. Integrating connectivity, sensors, and management platforms into lighting poles can reduce deployment costs for future applications like EV charging, environmental monitoring, and communications.
Within municipalities, cross-department collaboration is essential, since benefits span transportation, public safety, sustainability, and IT, while budgets and responsibilities are often siloed. Critically important are standards-based, open systems that avoid vendor lock-in and allow cities to scale pilots into citywide programs over time.
City leaders should frame streetlighting projects as long-term digital infrastructure investments rather than one-off energy-efficiency upgrades. Municipalities need to build business cases that quantify both hard savings and softer outcomes (e.g., reduced crime, fewer accidents, and better resident satisfaction) to unlock funding and stakeholder support.
More information is available here.
Image above courtesy of Pixabay.com
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