I really like Copenhagen, and have visited amny times. One thing unique about the cityis the fact that the streetlights are unlike any in any other city. Instead of being on poles at the sides of the roads, they are suspended from wires in the center of the intersections. This seems to make more sense-the lights are over the roads, not on the sides. I’m just wondering why no other city does it this way.
Does anybody know why the Danes chose to illuminate their streets this way?
Well, Amsterdam has these lights too. Although I must say they’re usually at intersections with tram rails, where there is an existing construction to hold up the electricity wires anyway. I suppose it wouldn’t make sense to add even more poles at such an intersection.
Other than those, our streetlights all have poles. Are ALL lights suspended in Copenhagen?
And why isn’t this in GQ 
I SO wanted to answer this one, being Danish and all, but I’ve nothing but WAGs to offer.
I think Coldfire (welcome back, BTW!) might be on to something with the tram lines, Copenhagen used to have trams and electrical trolley busses. After all, once you’ve gone to the trouble of establishing a power supply well above street level, why not use it for street lighting as well ?
To answer Coldfire’s question: Nope, it’s not every streetlight - there are still lots of pole-mounted ones.
Hey, now that I think of it, I did see both kinds of lights in Copenhagen. A few cities in Germany have the suspended lights, mostly in the older downtown areas where there would have been (or still are) streetcars.
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It’s sort of related, but you’ll have to wait a bit to find out…
What I hate is two things:
- All the lights here (UK) these days are orange (& those that aren’t are being replaced with orange ones). This is bad for two reasons (that I can think of at the moment, bound to be more) - the sky becomes a weird purpley-orange colour (it’s meant to be blue-black - remember midnight blue? It’s called that for a reason!) & if you are in a strange part of town at night, you go over a hill, and there is a string of orange lights. Not till you are really close does one of those oranges flip to a red & you suddenly realise it is traffic lights. If they had white lights again, you could tell the difference easily. Safely.
- Why when they replace streetlamps, don’t they put a reflective hood on the top - you’d get more light on the ground & it would stop the purple sky phenomenon and make astronomers much happier.
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So were they clever non-light polluting lamps, or ordinary ones? What colour were they?
maybe its because then would be really difficult to replace bulbs etc because you have to go right out into the middle of the road to get at the bulb.
Hey, if you had to change in the middle of the street, you’d be red too!
Thanlks folks, she’ll be here all week. Remember, Tipping is not a town in China