If a city is beautiful at night, it is sometimes a little dark.
Especially when a municipality decides to turn off its public lighting between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. as is the case in Rouen (Seine-Maritime) since August 1 in eleven of its districts after a first experimentation conducted around the Jardin des Plantes.
For the ecologist Françoise Lesconnec, the environmental advisor who was already following this file within the former municipal team, the first objective of this decision is to protect biodiversity, battered by artificial light.
"It is really through this prism that we must think about the problem, and not only in terms of saving energy or saving the city's finances, even if obviously this is not negligible".
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According to the mayor's office, nearly 100,000 euros should be saved with this measure, which concerns neither the right bank within its boulevards, nor a large part of the left bank and the Hauts de Rouen sector, in short, the most popular districts in a logic of fight against insecurity and the historic center for questions of tourist attractiveness.
"In the long term, the idea would be to manage to constitute wide corridors without lighting with the surrounding municipalities in which the fauna especially could find a certain tranquility and a more natural rhythm", continues the elected official who, during the last municipal council , had to deal with a motion defended by the opposition to "rekindle the lights" where they are off.
Opponents have started a petition
"This is not a fad, but the return of what comes back to us from the field", specifies the centrist Marine Caron, who would like this debate to be less ideological and more pragmatic. "In Grenoble for example, a city managed by an ecologist if I am not mistaken, the lighting decreases in intensity at night, but is not completely cut off", continues the young woman who has launched a collective and a petition, currently signed by 500 people. "We are not asking to turn everything back on, but perhaps one in three lampposts or invest in new generation presence detectors to guarantee safety in the broad sense of Rouen residents".
Antonin and Anaé, a couple of students living in the Saint-Gervais district, admit that they don't really know what to think: “On the one hand, we say to ourselves that it's good for the environment. But on the other hand, it's a bit of a hassle when you come back from an evening, especially as the sidewalks around us are rather narrow, ”summarizes Antonin. As for her companion, she admits not wanting to go home alone, laptop in hand for light. “It’s a bit freaking out, even though I’ve never been attacked”.
A feeling shared by others even if, as Françoise Lesconnec reminds us, "the feedback from the national police, especially during the first phase of experimentation, does not show an increase in delinquency or its interventions in the sector".
Between insecurity and a feeling of insecurity, the border sometimes hangs only by the light of a streetlamp.