Nice maps of light pollution in the papers recently - pretty shades of blue,
yellow, red, and an interesting way of looking at density of development. The
message was how light pollution has spread markedly in the last 10 years. Did
anyone else on crit-geog look at just how the maps had changed. It seemed to
me that the urban cores of high light pollution had barely spread at all, the
change was rural areas around the towns, that had moved up from little-or-no
pollution to medium light pollution. So now we know why city-dwellers seems
to have to travel ever further from home each time Patrick Moore comes on
with some celestial phenomenon we must all see tonight. It's because that
wealthy yuppie family (the one with the off-roader 4X4 that never goes off
road), the ones who've fled the city for an expensive house in the country
still within an hour's drive of work, have seen fit to put a 300 watt
security light on the garage of said 4X4. Or is it just that all the
near-city villages now have loads of executive 5-bed houses tacked on, all
lit up like Alcatraz on a foggy night.
Do other crit-geoggers reckon there's a class-dimension to increasing light
pollution? Marx might be spinning in his grave. Or perhaps not, guess you
can't see too many stars anyway from 6 foot down in a wooden box.
Hillary Shaw, School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT
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