Shooting in the early evening is simply the Best Time

As every professional photographer knows, shooting at dusk is one of the best times to get great light.
Combine this with artificial lighting - like this street lighting in Camaguey, Cuba, and you have double the impact.
Leave it another 40 mins or so and the shot is wasted with glaring white street lights and dead black skies.

Even in the 30 mins or so before real dusk, you'll find the light has deeper, richer qualities, long shadows and great visual appeal...

I was just a few minutes late for this 'early' evening shot - the brighter sun rays had already deadened off the church tower - but the warmth of the colours and that lovely ambiance still permeated the scene nicely.

Taking it one step further.
Here's an HDR shot I made of one of the more colourful street corners in old Havana, on Cuba and O'Reilly.
The light has pretty much gone yet the brightness of the murals and house textures jump off the page in the HDR process (here, using Aurora HDR Pro)

Here's the same spot (in single frame HDR format - the one above is a three frame HDR) shot at 11pm.
The incandescent and mercury vapour (?) type lighting add little to the ambiance of the street scene...

(Five shot HDR, Plaza San Francisco, Havana)
Even if you leave the shooting a bit late, if the sky still has some colour in it, combining that with artificial lighting gives a better result. 
More colour, brightness and contrast than a straight shot with a black night sky.