It often starts quite suddenly. One street goes dark, a few hours later the next block follows. In Villeurbanne, the direct neighboring city of Lyon, a series of copper thefts is currently causing growing unrest. Entire residential neighborhoods lose their street lighting at night — with consequences that go far beyond a technical defect.
“When you’re on foot, you have to be careful,” many residents now say. The sentence sounds banal but hits a nerve. Because the absence of light immediately alters daily life. Parents prefer to pick up their children by car, elderly people avoid nighttime walks, cyclists cautiously navigate intersections. Where streetlights usually provide orientation, dark gaps suddenly appear. And darkness does something to a city.
According to the city, around ten kilometers of copper cable have already been stolen. At times, about fifty streets were affected. The perpetrators apparently act deliberately: they open manholes, cut out underground cables, and disappear with the valuable metal. Copper has commanded high prices on the world market for years — and this makes public infrastructure an increasingly frequent target of organized thefts.
Particularly delicate: the method appears both professional and risky at the same time. Some intrusions take place in the middle of the night, sometimes even on live wires. Employees of the lighting service speak of damages that cannot be quickly repaired. New cables are often unavailable at short notice, spare parts arrive late. For this reason, some streets remain dark for days.
The city administration is trying to counteract this. Patrols are meant to detect new damage faster, and citizens now report broken streetlights directly to authorities. In early May, police caught a 46-year-old man in the act. But no one is sounding the all-clear. The cases occur too frequently for that.
The Villeurbanne case highlights a problem that already concerns many French cities. Copper theft no longer hits just construction sites or industrial facilities. Increasingly, power grids, railway systems, or public lighting come under attack. The actual material value almost seems secondary — the consequential costs explode. Above all, the feeling grows that even basic infrastructure has suddenly become vulnerable.
In Villeurbanne, this development strikes a particularly sensitive chord. The city has recently made headlines repeatedly due to drug crime, violence, and growing insecurity. Now that entire street blocks are also dark, it reinforces a vague feeling of loss of control among many residents. Sort of like: First the cables disappear, then the sense of security.
Because light serves much more than a practical purpose in modern cities. Illuminated streets convey presence, order, and orientation. Where brightness is missing, people’s behavior changes almost automatically. Spaces clear out faster, paths feel more threatening, and the city withdraws a bit into itself at night.
And that is exactly where the real seriousness of these thefts lies. A streetlamp seems ordinary — until it suddenly is gone.