Examples of Good and Bad Design
The Good.
The light here is illuminating the car park and not the sky
and roof of the building.
The strong cut-off profile of these flat glass full cut off luminaire can be seen against the wall, at a distance, none of it above the horizontal. The illumination is sent where it is needed and the uniformity is actually quite good within that area. Perhaps in this particular location, it could have done with a back plate blocker to cut out light from entering any windows.
The Bad
The shallow bowl high-pressure sodium luminaires illuminating this junction are also lighting the buildings, including the chimney pots, and i it is predominantly a direct flight and not the reflected light off the road that is causing this. This picture of mine has been used by the lighting industry in its own journal in a major article as an example of poor practice.
& the Ugly!
From a light design viewpoint this is truly ugly.
In this picture of a post-top-light, one can see that the illumination is almost entirely just above and below the horizontal onto the wall. In fact 30% of the light is above the horizontal and very little is on the ground, and yet these are still in common use. The low pressure sodium light sources are quite often been replaced with high-pressure sodium ones, but it doesn't get away from the fact that there is no optical control and it just makes everything brighter and even more light to the sky.