Presentation short abstract

This paper examines artificial light as urban pollution by analysing the nocturnal ecologies shaped by light infrastructure in Zurich. Drawing on walking interviews, it shows how light infrastructures disrupt habitats while generating contested spaces of governance and multispecies coexistence.

Presentation long abstract

Artificial light at night (ALAN) is increasingly recognised as a form of urban pollution, an ecological and endocrine disruptor that reshapes habitats, species behaviour, and the politics of urban environments. Cities around the world are attempting to address astronomical and ecological light pollution through techno-managerial measures such as smart lighting, spectral regulations, and environmental standards. Yet, while seeking to mitigate light as a pollutant, these approaches often obscure the more-than-human socio-ecological relations that light infrastructures mediate. This paper brings a political ecology of pollution perspective to the nighttime city, showing how ALAN simultaneously produces ecological harm and generates contested spaces of multispecies coexistence and justice. Drawing on more than thirty walking interviews with lighting planners, ecologists, researchers, public authorities, darkness and light-pollution advocates, and marginalised social groups, conducted primarily in Zurich, the paper examines how light infrastructures become sites where pollution, urban planning, governance, and multispecies coexistence intersect. Focusing on various situated nocturnal ecologies across the city, such as water bats along Zurich’s watercourses such as the Schanzengraben and the Limmat, fireflies (in particular Italian fireflies) on highland meadows in Zurich such as around the Kreuzkirche, and urban spiders inhabiting illuminated façades and bridges, we explore how the intersections among the socioecological effects of light pollution on humans and other-than-human actors shape the emergence of democratic and insurgent planning solutions that recognise these intersections in their response to light pollution and multispecies coexsistence in the city.