Designing Lighting Master Plans in Historical City Centers: A Structured Approach and Case Study from Adana

Urban lighting is a fundamental element of the built environment, enabling the perception of both living and built components of the city at night. In historic city centers, effective lighting strategies play a pivotal role in enhancing visibility, legibility, and continuity while reinforcing cultural identity. This study introduces a typology-based, data-driven framework for developing sustainable lighting master plans tailored to the spatial, morphological, and heritage characteristics of historic urban environments. The methodology was applied to the historic core of Adana (Turkey), a Roman-era urban fabric with multi-layered cultural heritage, including significant assets such as the Tepebağ Mound and its surrounding structures. The proposed five-stage process—comprising analysis, definition, design, planning, and implementation—integrates on-site observations, horizontal illuminance measurements, thematic spatial mapping, and a Lighting Demand Index (LDI) based on six spatial criteria, for which equal weighting was adopted and validated using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Lighting design proposals were developed according to defined typologies, and their compliance with international lighting standards was tested and verified through simulation. The framework provides a structured approach for reintegrating under-illuminated heritage zones into the contemporary nightscape in a sustainable and identity-focused manner, offering practical guidance for municipalities, planners, and lighting designers.