Philly Streetlight Improvement Project (Citywide LED + Lighting Management System)
This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed below and checked against them before publication. It has not had a complete human fact-check — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources.
1 sourced claim on this page, none individually verified yet — turn on “Sources in the text” to see each one.
How this atlas is made · What “last verified” means · What “source-checked” means · The full record behind this page
Philadelphia rewired roughly 130,000 city streetlights onto one remote-control network by 2025 — and a peer-reviewed study of the first third found a 21% drop in nighttime gun violence on the upgraded blocks.
what does this mean?
The strongest source behind this entry is an independent peer-reviewed or academic study. It grades who did the looking — not how well the project went. All four grades →Part of 1001 Smart Cities — 1,167 documented projects · 🏙️ 6 more in Philadelphia · 💡 Smart lighting guide · ⚡ Energy projects
The Philly Streetlight Improvement Project, built 2023-2025 by the Philadelphia Energy Authority (a municipal authority) and contractor Ameresco under a Pennsylvania Guaranteed Energy Savings Act performance contract, replaced roughly 130,000 city-owned streetlights with LEDs on a single networked Lighting Management System that reports outages instantly and lets the city dim or brighten fixtures remotely. Unlike Washington D.C.'s and Sao Paulo's streetlight upgrades, which used revenue-sharing public-private concessions, Philadelphia's is repaid from projected energy savings of about $5.4 million a year through the authority, not from advertising or utility revenue-sharing. A University of Pennsylvania Criminology & Public Policy study of the first 34,374 lights installed (Aug 2023-May 2024, across 13,275 blocks) found a 21% drop in outdoor nighttime gun violence, a 20% drop in violent crime and a 16% drop in property crime relative to not-yet-upgraded blocks.
📊 Impact
34,374 of ~130,000 streetlights upgraded Aug 2023-May 2024 across 13,275 blocks were linked to a 21% reduction in outdoor nighttime gun violence, a 20% reduction in violent crime, and a 16% reduction in property crime versus not-yet-upgraded blocks (MacDonald et al., Criminology & Public Policy, 2026, peer-reviewed); the full citywide conversion, completed 2025, is projected to cut streetlighting energy use by more than half and save $5.4M/year.
🎓 Lesson
The financing structure is the real point of difference from comparable entries: a state-authorized energy-savings performance contract through a municipal authority, not a revenue-sharing concession — and the first citywide streetlight upgrade in the atlas with a peer-reviewed causal crime estimate rather than a self-reported one.
Sources
📅 How old is the evidence?
Two clocks, kept apart: when this entry’s sources were published, and what has happened to its record in the atlas. Documented span: since 2023. 4 of 5 sources carry a publication date, from 8 August 2023 to 28 October 2025.
When the sources were published
- City of Philadelphia · city governmentCity of Philadelphia — Construction Begins on Citywide Philly Streetlight Improvement Project
- Philadelphia Energy Authority · city governmentPhiladelphia Energy Authority — Study Finds Citywide Streetlight Replacement Project Achieves 21% Reduction in Gun Violence
- Wiley · researchMacDonald et al. — Can enhanced street lighting improve public safety at scale?, Criminology & Public Policy
- PhillyVoice · pressPhillyVoice — Your guide to Philadelphia's $91 million streetlight replacement project
Show your work What this page rests on and what it can’t tell you · all 1 claims with their sources · the forensic record
Evidence Passport · public beta 1 addressable claim, 5 source dossiers, one permanent baseline. The passport is unreviewed — an AI-assisted structural migration, not a human or expert endorsement. Every revision keeps a permanent copy under revision history.
Inspect the claims, one by one — verbatim text, sources and caveats for all 1
The text below is copied verbatim from the published record. Each claim names the source dossiers that carry it; caveats stay attached to the claim they qualify.
clm-f77a06d56ff6cdd0
quantitative
34,374 of ~130,000 streetlights upgraded Aug 2023-May 2024 across 13,275 blocks were linked to a 21% reduction in outdoor nighttime gun violence, a 20% reduction in violent crime, and a 16% reduction in property crime versus not-yet-upgraded blocks
Sources carrying this claim
Forensic record — source dossiers, gaps, hashes and the exact revision this page renders
This layer records what is known about each source, what is still missing, and the exact snapshot this page is rendering. A missing date, archive or hash stays visible as missing.
Awaiting operator and domain-expert review; publication of this revision implies neither.
sha256:8a3f42a0a3b753a77518b3546e03a88869f1c5126d8a5d945703b325f5119338
- 1
- of 1 claims mapped
- 5
- source dossiers
- 4
- publication dates recorded
- 0
- archives linked
- 0
- exact locators
- 0
- content captures hashed
Governance facts carried by the record
- Operator
- Philadelphia Energy Authority + City of Philadelphia Streets Department (contractor: Ameresco)
- Actor types
- city-government
- Funding model
- public
- Funding description
- Repaid from ~$5.4M/year in guaranteed energy savings via a Pennsylvania Guaranteed Energy Savings Act (GESA) performance contract, financed through Philadelphia Energy Authority
- Cost
- ~$91M citywide conversion
- Ownership
- Not recorded
- Decision rights
- Not recorded
- Exit conditions
- Not recorded
5 source dossiers
Philadelphia Energy Authority — Study Finds Citywide Streetlight Replacement Project Achieves 21% Reduction in Gun Violence
- Stable source ID
src-a66c8ebe152942d1- Publisher
- Name not classified · philaenergy.org
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2025-04-24
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-02
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-20
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Study topline figures, project scope and financing
- Claims linked
- Background source; no baseline claim points here
Penn Crime and Justice Policy Lab — An Evaluation of Citywide Street Lighting Upgrades on Gun Violence
- Stable source ID
src-d74d42c405b5e240- Publisher
- Name not classified · crimejusticelab.org
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- Not recorded
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-02
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-20
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Study design and researcher affiliation
- Claims linked
- Background source; no baseline claim points here
MacDonald et al. — Can enhanced street lighting improve public safety at scale?, Criminology & Public Policy
- Stable source ID
src-18025a03e6cc091f- Publisher
- Name not classified · onlinelibrary.wiley.com
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2025-09-23
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-02
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-20
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Peer-reviewed journal publication of the crime-reduction findings, 2026
- Claims linked
PhillyVoice — Your guide to Philadelphia's $91 million streetlight replacement project
- Stable source ID
src-e4834e74935c8ea6- Publisher
- Name not classified · phillyvoice.com
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2025-10-28
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-02
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-20
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Project cost, LMS/networked-control description
- Claims linked
- Background source; no baseline claim points here
City of Philadelphia — Construction Begins on Citywide Philly Streetlight Improvement Project
- Stable source ID
src-cffde453c48a86c7- Publisher
- Name not classified · phila.gov
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2023-08-08
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-02
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-20
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Construction start date, scope of 130,000 streetlights
- Claims linked
- Background source; no baseline claim points here
Known limits of this passport
- Publisher names and source languages have not yet been classified; domains are recorded without guessing.
- Existing source notes are descriptive locators, not page- or paragraph-exact citations.
- A missing archive, publication date or content hash is shown as null rather than inferred.
- The project-level evidence grade ranks the strongest source in the entry; it is not a truth score for every claim.
Continue exploring
Compare this project
Explore the wider context
📎 Cite this project
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Philly Streetlight Improvement Project (Citywide LED + Lighting Management System)” — Philadelphia, United States. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/philadelphia-streetlight-led-lms/ (last verified 2026-08-02). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.