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Public: Street Lighting
A Streetlamp Named Desire   (+7, -1)  [vote for, against]
welcoming streetlights

Most streetlamps are austere lights blazing down from the top of tall poles.
A Streetlamp Named Desire is the name given to a new type of kinder streetlamp.

Instead of the endless parade of identical lamps, the new streetlamps each have a small replica house placed at the top of the pole. Each house is unique, just as each person's home is unique, featuring an infinite range of window configurations, roof patterns, and general shape types.

At night all the lights in the houses come on, and shine brightly, lightly up the street just as well as before but in a much kinder and more interesting way.

People living in the street can take collective ownership of their streetlamps, and make suggestions as to how they can be improved and made even more personal, so that they look just as nice in the day when they are switched off. Windows can have blinds that feather; roof tops can have chimneys; front doors can be painted different colours.

For bigger streets, the houses become blocks of apartments featuring many windows but with a similar degree of individuality.
-- xenzag, Dec 18 2021

The Tower of Imagination (2011) https://www.maurice...ination%20(1)_2.jpg
Not illuminated, only one. [pocmloc, Dec 19 2021]

favela https://en.wikipedi...from_Copacabana.JPG
How the kerbside might look [pocmloc, Dec 19 2021]

Recursion in models https://xkcd.com/878/
As usual, Mr Munroe has already done the maths... [neutrinos_shadow, Dec 23 2021]

There are wee houses on poles by one of the roundabouts in Craigavon but they don't light up.

I fear the light intensity required for effective illumination is a lot stronger than for decorative twinkling. So in practice it's not going to work.

But [+] for the idea.

There's nothing sweeter than wee miniature houses with wee lights inside.
-- pocmloc, Dec 18 2021


I'm confident that the latest lighting technology will produce bright illumination.
-- xenzag, Dec 18 2021


Easily LED [+]
-- pertinax, Dec 19 2021


Also, put me down for a scale model of a ridiculous rock pinnacle, of the kind that Dr Seuss used to draw, with a wizard's tower on top ; teeny stained-glass windows in shades of eldritch, and an occasional sudden LED flash accompanied by a very silly high-pitched "mwahahahaha!"
-- pertinax, Dec 19 2021


I don't doubt that LEDs can be made as bright as you like from as small an orifice as you like. My point was if the LEDs are bright enough to illuminate the roadway to statutory levels of illumination then they will be so bright that the details of the window frame mouldings and pilasters of the miniature building on the top of the pole will be undiscernable in the wash of light.

The solution then (assuming you wish to have the miniature windows visible to look at, and also have enough light to illuminate the roadway) is not to increase the brightness of each window, but to increase the number of miniature windows. So instead of one miniature house on a pole every 20m or whatever I am imagining the entire pole and the walls and kerbs and other street furniture all covered in miniature houses like a favela.
-- pocmloc, Dec 19 2021


+ This is so charming! I would like a miniature cathedral with tall turrets. Maybe some silhouettes of people running up or down the stairs.
-- xandram, Dec 19 2021


I thought from the title this was going to be something for our canine buddies.
-- Skewed, Dec 21 2021


My neighbor builds mailboxes that are tiny replicas of the owners' homes. Quite cute.
-- RayfordSteele, Dec 22 2021


Birds can operate the automatic mini garage doors!
-- Letsbuildafort, Dec 22 2021


[Rayford] do the miniature houses your neighbour builds, have miniature mailboxes...?
-- pocmloc, Dec 23 2021


[pocmloc]; Aaah! Recursion! See linky.
-- neutrinos_shadow, Dec 23 2021



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