becuzitisbitter:

Throughout history, streetlights have been used as tools in riot prevention, and their earliest implementation in the coal gas lamps of Great Britain was closely allied with the simultaneous deployment of London’s early police force. In 1785 the London Chronicle proclaimed that “Light and watch are the greatest enemies to villains,” and by 1823 the newly professionalized night watchmen would be accompanied by “nearly forty thousand lamps” that “lit more than two hundred miles of London’s streets.” When Baron Haussmann redesigned Paris after the uprisings of 1848, wide, well-lit boulevards were a centerpiece of his strategy for riot control. In the U.S. the redeveloped inner city has followed an almost identical pattern. Dense, narrow-allied warehouse districts and project housing were demolished to make way for wide, brightly-lit boulevards sprinkled with surveillance cameras.

Hinterland, Phil A. Neel