City light shows: architectural lighting events

 I am a big fan of architectural lighting generally.  Few cities have lighting master plans and even fewer address lighting as an element of special events and programming ("Philips changes name to Signify").

I've written about events like Glow in Georgetown DC, Dlectricity in Detroit, and Chestnut Hill's "Light of Night" in Philadelphia.

I didn't know that Pittsburgh has had an architectural lighting event for 60 years, now going into the 61st ("Downtown will sparkle for Highmark Light Up Night on Nov. 19," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).  From the article:

According to The Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, which announced the event on Thursday, a Saturday Light Up Night not only eliminates rush-hour traffic concerns, but attracts more people to the event.

Walkway under the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. Flickr image by Jocelyn Coblin. 

Light Up Night will feature free musical performances, fireworks, tree lightings and more. Full details on the festivities will be announced in a press conference on Wednesday morning.

 All big cities should consider doing this kind of event ("Planning programming by daypart, month, season," "Night time as a daypart and a design product").

And it should be organized as part of a multifaceted set of activities.  If anything, I think Pittsburgh, doing it for one night only, might be a bit too conservative.

Public art projections, public history projections, architectural lighting of buildings, church steeples (Cleveland has a program that assists churches in the cost of implementing and operating the ongoing lighting of steeples), etc., should be considered as part of neighborhood cultural history planning, public art planning, and community and commercial district activation planning.

-- "Planning programming by daypart, month, season: and Boston Winter Garden, DC's Holiday Market, etc.," 2019

Of course, adherents to Dark Sky considerations would disagree.