Street Furniture

What is Street Furniture?

Many cities and communities are increasing their focus on the aesthetics, functionality and safety potential of the physical built street environment. The most functional elements of street furniture include:

• Streetlights and Poles

• Benches

• Kiosks

• Waste Receptacles

• Bus, Trolley and Light Rail Stops

• Street Signs

• Public Art and Memorials

One of the largest trends is using street furniture to make technology disappear. Below are innovative examples of how technology has aesthetically been concealed in functional street furniture form factors.

Below is an example of smart city functions that can be integrated into a set up called the Telebelly which is attached to the well known www.bigbelly.com waste receptacles or other innovative uses of new waste receptacle technology. These functions can also be deployed in the form factors shown above.

Lightpoles and San Jose

The city of San Jose determined that their city owned pole infrastructure was an essential element of creating a smart city and critical to the telecommunications carriers. They put together this overview of how to use the streetlight infrastructure to innovate and increase broadband coverage with the carriers.

Smart Poles-Telecommunications

As the telecommunications deploy 5G, they are required to bring the antennas closer to the cell users. These deployments are called Small Cells. Additionally, Wi fi, Cameras and Sensors are proliferating. Enabling technology, supplying power and maintaining aesthetics has inspired numerous innovations in pole technology.

One of the earliest customized projects in the US was deployed in Denver via a collaboration between Xcel Energy, the city of Denver and a pole manufacturer called Aero Wireless. www.aerowirelessgroup.com

Here are a couple of examples of other pole deployments.

Leading Distributor of Smart Poles: www.graybar.com david.eckell@graybar.com

Aero Wireless/Comptek:  https://aerowirelessgroup.com/ Kristie Kidder - kkidder@aerowirelessgroup.com

Signify: https://www.signify.com/en-us/innovation/brightsites William.mcshane@signify.com