Participatory street lighting strategy process

As part of the development of its new 2025 Strategic Plan, the City of Los Angeles' Bureau of Street Lighting embarked on a massive expansion of outreach efforts to understand how the growing array of services it could provide might best be delivered to the communities it serves. Targeted efforts "to reach people with limited English proficiency, who are not connected digitally, and who reside in low-income neighborhoods, staff distributed surveys at community events, through Family Source Centers, and by partnering with community-based organizations to hold focus groups in Spanish." The findings confirmed many assumptions: "Safety is a priority, so interest is high in safety cameras and sensors that automatically turn on lights as pedestrians walk by. People are also interested in air quality sensors, and they want access to wifi." The Division will continue to leverage these relationships as it rolls out various planning and design steps for the various initiatives in the plan. All of this points towards a dramatic escalation in efforts to engage traditionally excluded groups in smart infrastructure planning and deployment.