101 03 Vision Lighthinking meets Thierry Marsick, head of the urban lighting department at Lyon city council. A conversation about history and the future of urban lighting. Lyon’s urban lighting plan and its legacies ThierryMarsick Could you give us a brief rundown of the history of Lyon's lighting plan? Lyon has been working to draw up a lighting plan since 1989 when it launched its pioneering Light Plan which today serves as a benchmark in Europe and across the globe. In the same year, the Festival of Lights transformed from an event linked to a popular tradition into a carnival where artists and designers created installations with spectacular lighting in tune with the urban context. The Light Plan developed over two time periods, of around fifteen years each. In the first, the shortest, between 1989 and 2000, the programme focused around the aim of "improving the city's scenic offerings". In other words, Lyon was viewed as a theatre and its treasures began to be appreciated by focusing not only on the functional aspect of lighting but also its aesthetic purpose. The operation involved not only the city's historical heritage but also natural elements like rocks and plants on the hillside. In the early years of the twenty-first century, and the second stage of the Light Plan, attention turned to saving energy so the lighting needed to respect the environment with a "money saving" approach. The second Lighting Plan, drawn up in 2004, intended to create a stronger bond between lighting and the methods of using it, as well as, the requirements of those who work and live in the different parts of the city. The second fifteen year period has just come to an end and the City Lighting Department is laying the foundations for a third Light Plan where we would like to take a closer look at requirements and forms of usage, studying the link between public and private light, which in some cases live in perfect harmony with one another, while in other cases, a little less so. The method used by the city to create a diffused, shared light culture involves carrying out its own analysis using participating methods. We organise a number of local meetings for residents, and opportunities to exchange our perception of light. We often organise walks with residents to get a perspective of what works and what doesn't and we find ourselves discussing poor lighting a great deal, and how it can be improved. What has been the legacy of the lighting plan? Was it a model that led on to other work, for example. The Lyon festival inspired the city of Ghent in Belgium which has been holding a light festival every three years since 1999: there were numerous encounters and comparisons with the city's administration on what had been the city of Lyon's experience. The same occurred in Vietnam, especially in Ho Chi Minh, again providing advise on how to draw up a lighting strategy. The guidelines, in that case, focused on identifying coherent nocturnal environments and the assessment of the relationship between costs and the impact the work would have. Another message that needs to