Beyond brightness: How lighting configuration and urban context shape nighttime park use

As nighttime activities become increasingly integral to urban life, enhancing nighttime park use through lighting has become an important planning concern. Although park lighting is widely regarded as a key factor influencing nighttime park use, empirical evidence remains limited regarding why parks with similar lighting conditions exhibit different levels of nighttime use. Using Detroit as a case study, this research examines how park lighting influences nighttime park use under varying configurations and contextual conditions. Based on crowdsourced data from 2021 to 2023, the study adopts a multi-stage analytical approach. Temporal, spatial autocorrelation, and nonparametric analyses are first used to examine spatial and temporal associations between park lighting and nighttime park use. A Mundlak-hybrid panel regression model is then employed to estimate the marginal effects of illumination density and lighting distribution structures across spatial contexts. Machine learning models are further used to identify key predictors and nonlinear relationships associated with higher levels of nighttime park use. The results indicate that park lighting and nighttime park use show a stable spatial association in Detroit, but lighting effects are strongly context dependent. Illumination density does not exhibit a consistent or statistically significant association across park contexts. In contrast, the edge–core lighting imbalance index shows a significant negative association with nighttime park use, particularly in large parks with low surrounding functional intensity. Machine learning results further suggest that, within the set of variables examined in this study, park size and surrounding functional density are the most influential predictors of nighttime park use. Overall, the findings highlight the importance of considering both lighting configuration and surrounding functional environments when designing strategies to enhance nighttime park use, while acknowledging that other unobserved factors, such as accessibility, internal spatial configuration, and entrance-level design may also play important roles beyond the scope of the current analysis.