New York City is holding a competition to design new street lights. Part of their objectives are "Seek out and identify new ideas for public street lighting" and "Obtain the flexibility to apply an integrated streetlight design on a block-by-block, street-by-street, or district-by-district basis within the city's five boroughs"; beyond that, it's more of a mouthful:
The current city standard, introduced almost fifty years ago, consists of variations of a fabricated steel pole and Cobra Head luminaire. It is the city's most widely used streetlight design. The additional design challenge for the competitors is to create an imaginative, cost-effective, and enduring design with the capability, over time, to become the city's preeminent and most widely used streetlight.
How's that for hot? Judges in the competition include architect Peter Eisenman, lighting designer Paul Marantz (who helped design the Tribute in Light), and structural designer Guy Nordenson (who helped figured out the engineering of the redesigned Freedom Tower).
More City Lights Design Competition - Competition Info
Another kind of City Lights: The Charlie Chaplin film.
