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Putting leisure to work: city image and representations of nightlife
Abstract
Increasingly ubiquitous references to night‐time economy within urban revitalisation agendas mark the concept as a standard component in a globally circulating ‘post‐industrial city’ script. The merit of the concept rests upon an assumed capacity for diverse and vibrant nightlife to contribute to urban quality of life and city marketability. Its attraction to cities seeking to expand the profitability and utility of the spectacular landscapes of consumption established along waterfront and within inner‐city locales reclaimed from post‐industrial disuse are readily apparent. However, only certain kinds of nightlife convey the prerequisite cultural sophistication necessary for making a ‘correct’ contribution to the desired city image. Consequently, nightlife is cast as a site of problematic behaviour and nightlife policy settings aimed at shifting the dominant cultures of night‐specific consumption become implicated in demarcating the boundaries of appropriate activity. This paper examines these themes with respect to Newcastle, Australia. Through an analysis of the representations of nightlife cultures in local policy and planning, this paper argues that a significant contributor to the sense of crisis permeating Newcastle’s after‐dark urban culture has been the entanglement of nightlife in urban renewal and city re‐imaging processes.
... The world of a port district is not closed to other citizens. Moreover, other elements of this myth become idealized: a simple hired seaman, a port district with its nightlife (Bavinton, 2010), promiscuous girls in a port (Cordingly, 2001), a brave pirate (hardly ever a "bandit"), physical work (during which people are singing sea shanties for entertainment), a sailor's love affair with a different girl in every port, and so on. ...
... The attractiveness of the port city is enhanced by promising re-entertainment and abolishing rigid rules of everyday life such as through the presence of entertainment venues. Furthermore, contemporary designs of waterfront reconstructions refer to these images of places of nightlife (Bavinton, 2010). An image of a great ship, usually a cruiser, entering or leaving a port is a symbolic scene that is most often depicted in the analyzed photographs and that complements a port's panorama. ...
The concept of a port city, when narrated by popular visualities, goes through intense transformations of port spaces. Globalization, technological transformations of the maritime industry, and waterfront renewal programs influence a romantic myth of the port town and maritime culture. The aim of the article is to interpret the cultural conventions governing the portrayal of port cities and present a picture postcard as a visual narrative. Visual discourse analysis is used for a study of seven European port cities and their visual representations. Three metaphorical dominants of visual discourse have been distinguished: (1) waterfront and the port town tertiary sector; (2) technology, power, and domination; and (3) maritime culture and romanticism. The postcards that are analyzed reflect a tension between the intensely transformed postindustrial areas and the romantic images of a port city.
... Referente aos trabalhos sobre economia noturna, ainda é preciso ressaltar que ela foi objeto de inúmeros estudos efetuados em cidades de Estados desenvolvidos (BAVINTON, 2010;EVANS, 2012;ROWE;LYNCH, 2014;WOLIFSON;DROZ-DZEWSKI, 2016), mas pouco investigada em cidades de países emergentes, como as grandes metrópoles brasileiras. Entre essas metrópoles, destaca-se o Rio de Janeiro, na qual o entretenimento noturno é um campo de criação de patrimônios materiais e imateriais -tal campo, além de estimular novos compositores, músicos, intérpretes e DJs, entre outros, vem gerando renda para uma cadeia produtiva que engloba produtores culturais, gerentes operacionais, administradores, cozinheiros, garçons, técnicos de som e luz, recepcionistas, seguranças, assessores de imprensa, designers e também a empregos indiretos. ...
... O êxito das atividades oferecidas depende, muitas vezes, da capacidade de fixar públicos; nesse sentido, as atividades de animação noturna -em especial as de cunho cultural e criativo -têm um papel fundamental no marketing territorial e urbano, contribuindo para a atração de investimentos, dinamização da economia urbana e competição nos locais onde elas surgem como fatores diferenciadores da qualidade de vida. A oferta de lazeres noturnos (festas, festivais e shows de música e dança etc.) é fundamental, por exemplo, para a atração de turistas, em especial de jovens, como são os casos de Ibiza e Cancun (ALVES, 2009;BAVINTON, 2010). ...
O objetivo deste artigo é explicar a desigualdade na distribuição espacial da economia noturna LGBT existente entre as regiões central e sul do Rio de Janeiro e o restante da cidade. O argumento principal é o de que a prefeitura, baseada nos parâmetros excludentes do “capitalismo rosa”, reurbanizou certas zonas, fiscalizou espaços públicos e ações dos empresários e promoveu o combate à LGBTfobia, entretanto, concentrou suas ações nas áreas revitalizadas ou valorizadas da cidade. Por sua vez, o empresariado auxiliou projetos culturais e gerou empregos para profissionais criativos. Com foco no público masculino gay de renda mais alta, ele fez mais investimentos na Zona Sul e no centro da cidade do que em outros locais. Ademais, como será demonstrado, os usuários se tornaram responsáveis pela seleção dos lugares e a organização deles para a vida noturna, vendo regiões do centro e da Zona Sul como espaços simbólicos de reconhecimento mútuo para a proteção e o exercício pleno da sua identidade, em contraste com outras áreas, normalmente associadas ao preconceito e à rejeição.
... Yet, there is also evidence of the impact on late-trading venues in Newcastle, with a number either closing down or going into receivership as a result of restricted trading. It could be suggested that this outcome merely highlights that their business models have been based on socially damaging levels of high-volume and rapid consumption of alcohol, but it also demonstrates a reductionist focus on 'safety' and control at the expense of other dimensions of the nightlife complex previously considered of primary import, such as employment, external investment and city image (Bavinton 2010). The focus of our critique is the manner in which the approach to nightlife has alternated between stimulation-focused and control-order paradigms. ...
... City imaging processes and culture-led urban regeneration schemes have come to dominate the 'toolkits' of governments, urban and cultural planners, and sundry others with a stake in urban renewal. The explicit location of night-time economy policies within the tradition of culture-led regeneration models reveals the instrumentalization of culture at the heart of efforts to turn night-specific leisure and consumption towards urban renewal objectives (Bavinton 2010). Yet, the wholesale shift in urban renewal priorities towards landscapes of consumption means that there are now few non-commercial activities available in the city after dark beyond intermittent publicly underwritten events such as 820 D. Rowe and N. Bavinton open-air concerts and cultural festivals that themselves have strong commercial and quasi-commercial constituents. ...
The concept of the night-time economy emerged in Britain in the early 1990s in the context of strategies to counter de-industrialization and inner-urban decline. Despite registering a shift towards more fluid, fragmented and diversified structures and rhythms of work, leisure and urban space, a framework that acknowledges cultural complexity has not, in practice, characterized night-time economy policy. After-dark cultural complexity has been obscured, instead, by a discursive concentration on those night-time economy leisure practices entangled with rapid, high-level consumption of alcohol, especially among young people. This reductionist discourse – oscillating between stimulating and controlling leisure cultures – has restricted policy development within a complex governance environment composed of many (in)formal organizations and levels of government. This article addresses the confusing, contradictory influence of a polarized night-time economy policy agenda and exposes the contrasting multilayered complexities of the diverse cultural practices of urban nightlife. By engaging with cultural complexity as integral to the city after dark, new conceptual trajectories are proposed that can point the way towards a more effective framework for understanding the lived experience of night-time culture.
... In the field of city spatial imagery research, the hotspots are clustered in four areas: (1) the characteristics of urban spatial imagery as determined by a dynamic and comparative data analysis (Huang, 2002;Kitchin and Blades, 2002). (2) The effects of city spatial imagery, which is thought to influence residents' attitudes and behaviors (Hayllar and Griffin, 2005), such as influencing residents' evaluation of their activity experience (Smith and McGillivray, 2022), evaluation of the urban environment (Abass et al., 2019), behavioral choices (Prayag et al., 2017), attitudes towards urban resource management measures (Ramkissoon and Nunkoo, 2011;Hammitt et al., 2015), and urban image formation and communication (Bavinton, 2013;Hernández-Mogollón et al., 2018). (3) The formation mechanism of city spatial imagery; investigating the various influencing factors and causes of city spatial imagery; and comprehending the inner formation mechanism of city spatial imagery. ...
The city on social media has become a hot topic in the study of city communication and city image. From the perspective of spatial theory and the communication characteristics of social media, this paper divides the spatial imagery of TikTok into three spaces: material space-cognitive attention, mental space-mental association, and relational space-emotional involvement. Based on the content analysis of 40 videos, we analyze the process of social media using cognition, association, and emotion as the starting points to increase the material space, expand the mental space, and expand the relational space. We find that spatial imagery can be co-constructed from the material space, mental space, and relational space. Lastly, the model is changed, and the value of using spatial theory to understand how city images are made is talked about.
... Studies that focus on nightlife, nightclubs, and their management are not very extensive, although the economic importance of nightlife is evident (Eldridge, 2019;Eldridge and Smith, 2019;Nofre, 2020). There are purely descriptive or historiographic studies of nightlife and nightclubs in Los Angeles (Hong and Duff, 1997), Belgrade (Todorovic and Bakir, 2005), Ios (Stylidis et al., 2008), Milwaukee (Campo and Ryan, 2008), Newcastle-Australia (Bavinton, 2010), London (Garcia, 2018), New York (Houser, 2018;Rees, 2019), Taiwan (Huang, 2011), Lisbon (Nofre et al., 2019), Sunny Beach (Tutenges, 2013), Ayia Napa (Sönmez et al., 2013), Corfu (Kamenidou et al., 2013), Perth (Allmark and Stratton, 2019), Wrocław (Iwanicki and Dłuewska, 2015), Berlin (Garcia, 2018), Barcelona (Nofre et al., 2018), Madrid (Aramayona and García, 2019) and Sydney (Homan, 2019), but without delving into systematic classifications. In the management-related field, there is a group of studies (Skinner et al., 2005(Skinner et al., , 2008Kubacki et al., 2007) on servicescape (Bitner, 1992), some studies on the image of tourist destinations (Stylidis et al., 2008;Berrozpe et al., 2017) or premises (Rivera, 2010;Aagerup, 2020), studies on the background of the tourist experience (Taheri et al., 2016;Nghiêm-Phú, 2020), and studies on residents' attitudes (Serra and Ramón, 2017;. ...
The island of Ibiza is a western Mediterranean destination known internationally for its nightlife. The aim of this paper is to make a proposal to classify the different types of premises in the Ibiza nightlife offer. This involves making a first definition that allows to delimit which businesses are parts of the sector. The methodology used is based on the case study and specifically, on the review of the promotional actions and activities carried out, completed with the visit to the premises. The classification has been made based on the offer marketed and not only on the legal forms used, as innovation goes ahead of the existing legal classifications. Although it is a particular application, due to the international importance of Ibiza, it is a good starting point to classify the nightlife offer of many other tourist destinations. The resulting typology divides the sector into two large groups: nightclubs and other premises. While nightclubs have musical parties as their main activity declared, the other premises have accommodation or catering as their main activity, with music being an element of differentiation. Nightclubs are divided into several subgroups, depending on their size and relevance. The other premises are subdivided into Beach Clubs, Hotel Clubs, Party Boats, Lounge Clubs, Disco Pubs, among others.
... En este sentido, y aparte de resorts urbanos de diversión nocturna como puedan ser, por ejemplo, Albufeira en Portugal, Salou y Lloret de Mar en Cataluña, Ibiza en las Baleares, o Slanchev Bryag en Bulgaria (entre otros), la promoción de la categoría "ciudad 24 horas abierta" -en terminología de O'Connor (1997), Chatterton y Hollands (2003) o Crary (2013), entre otros-constituye, para numerosas ciudades europeas, uno de los elementos centrales de sus respectivas estrategias y campañas de marketing urbano y promoción turística de la ciudad. De hecho, el ocio nocturno comercial se erige, en la actualidad, como fundamental en la constante (re-)configuración de cómo turistas, visitantes y diferentes segmentos de la población local 'consumen' y 'experimentan' la llamada 'ciudad turística' (e.g., Bavinton, 2013;Eldridge, 2019). Sin embargo, el ocio nocturno urbano en Europa se encuentra fuertemente caracterizado por la producción y reproducción (a menudo institucionalmente toleradas e incluso implícitamente promovidas) de desigualdades basadas en clase social, edad, género, orientación sexual, coste de acceso, provisión de transporte público, accesibilidad según diversidad funcional, origen étnico y/o geográfico, religión y sus múltiples intersecciones (e.g., Chatterton y Hollands, 2003;Nofre y Eldridge, 2018). ...
En buena parte de las mayores ciudades de la Europa meridional, el turismo urbano y más concretamente la turistificación del centro de la ciudad han constituido unas de las principales estrategias de mitigación y superación de los efectos socioeconómicos negativos derivados de la última crisis financiera y económica global. De ahí que un número creciente de autores sugieran una clara interacción entre la gentrificación turística y la gentrificación comercial. Sin embargo, la creciente interrelación entre la economía del ocio nocturno, la turistificación urbana y todas las complejas formas de interacción simultánea entre ambas – como fuerzas motrices fundamentales de los actuales procesos de transformación del tejido social, económico y cultural de las áreas centrales de las ciudades europeas – no han merecido hasta la fecha la suficiente atención académica. Desde una óptica eminentemente teórica, este artículo expondrá los diferentes retos y desafíos teóricos y metodológicos que la turistificación de ‘la noche’ conlleva para el estudio de la ciudad turística, argumentando además que la turistificación de ‘la noche’ surge como una de las formas más agresivas de desposesión material, simbólica y patrimonial de las comunidades locales de los barrios históricos centrales de buena parte de las ciudades europeas.
... Many cities have undergone a revitalization process in recent decades, as a part of which they have transformed their centers into places of night life entertainment lasting until the early hours of the morning (e.g. Lovatt, O'Connor, 1995;Bavinton, 2010). Such changes in the urban space have also led to changes in the ways of spending free time, especially among young people who have begun to spend time in dance clubs and pubs (e.g. ...
Central European cities became popular party tourism destinations after the enlargement of the European Union in 2004. Cracow and Warsaw became one of the most popular such destinations among Polish cities. With the increase in the number of tourists in both cities the incomes of local entrepreneurs increased, especially owners of restaurants, bars and clubs, but over time the presence of many drunken, behaving improperly tourists from abroad became the cause of conflicts with the local population and other tourists. These conflicts occur mainly in public spaces, near places with the highest concentration of bars and clubs. Such spaces can be called a before party zones (for bars and pubs) and party or clubbing zones (for clubs). This paper presents such zones in Cracow and Warsaw.
... Many cities have undergone a revitalization process in recent decades, as a part of which they have transformed their centers into places of night life entertainment lasting until the early hours of the morning (e.g. Lovatt, O'Connor, 1995;Bavinton, 2010). Such changes in the urban space have also led to changes in the ways of spending free time, especially among young people who have begun to spend time in dance clubs and pubs (e.g. ...
This paper discusses territorial marketing of Euroregions. Websites, one of the marketing tools, were the subject of an analysis. Based on literature research and experiences of the authors, criteria for website assessment have been prepared and 14 Polish Euroregional entities were the subject of an empirical study. An expert binary analysis and a survey in which a group of Polish students participated were used in the study. The study has shown that the websites vary considerably by content, form and navigation. Euroregions with interesting, stylish and modern websites have been identified. These websites are more and more commonly used for territorial promotion, including
tourist promotion. After relevant consultations and modifications, the assessment criteria and the research tools that were proposed by the authors can be used in research and can support Euroregional authorities in the improving of marketing communication tools.
... In turn, the night-time leisure economy has become a key strategy in the urban regeneration and revitalization of many urban centres worldwide (e.g. Law 2000; Chatterton and Hollands 2003;Bavinton 2010). Interestingly, the night-time leisure economy has been widely considered as a key element of tourism promotion and city marketability. ...
The former harbour quarter of Cais do Sodré in central Lisbon has been recently transformed into the most crowded nightlife spot in the city, causing some negative social and spatial impacts such as the worsening of community liveability during night-time hours. In addition, the inefficacy of the latest community intervention project conducted in the area (SAFE!N) has been largely due to the liminal governance of the urban night applied in the area. In the final remarks, some actions are suggested to foster long-term sustainable coexistence between the right to the city and the right to leisure in the area.
... We can see this in current initiatives too, the Ideas Fiesta, for example, that both seeks and shapes opinions, with pre-selected schemes for approval; it entertains and ranks, rather than debates ideas, and those offered, we argue, were limited to generic spaces of consumption (Fullagar et al. 2013). The consumption marketed within the NWC brand is, as Bavinton (2010) argues for Newcastle (UK), a narrative of the sedate pleasures of food and wine, never becoming rowdy drunken, or aberrant. This is despite the well-known clashing of night-life noise and residents' expectations of quiet in Brisbane (Darchen and Ladouceur 2013) and other Australian cities, and the broader gentrification issues as incoming inner-city dwellers confront homelessness, drug abuse, or other social issues (see Shaw 2007). ...
Brisbane is Australia’s third largest city, and capital of the state of Queensland. It has a sprawling urban footprint and impending connections to neighbouring metropolises, said to create a ‘200 km city’. The governing body of Brisbane controls the largest municipality in Australia, with unrivalled opportunity to influence both urban planning and marketing for the CBD and suburbs. Brisbane is home to over one million people, and its population has grown rapidly over the past decades, doubling in the past 40 years. Brisbane represents the quintessential city with an emerging quest for urbanity, both in brand and physical form. The relationships between the city’s urban planning and its branding is not well examined, despite clear entanglement between these two strategies. We use a case-study analysis of both Brisbane City (which is glossed as the Central Business District) and an outer-suburban area, Inala, to interrogate how urban identities and brand are being constructed in relation to their social settings and governance, with particular reference to the importance of city branding and its relationship to planning strategies. The manifestation of branding and relationship to place qualities at the core and on the periphery of Brisbane are examined, with relevance for other rapidly growing, ambitious cities. The focus of Brisbane’s push for urbanity is on the city centre, and is not representative of the typical suburban condition, nor of many cities dominated by suburban forms. An analysis of place brand, planning strategies and resident’s responses to place, from planning, architectural and anthropological perspectives are offered, as an alternative reading of place brand from the marketing dominated approach usually favoured in branding analysis. We make recommendations to incorporate a more complete version of place in the construction of a “genuine” urbanity. We argue that the recognition of resident-centred place identity in place branding will produce more socially sustainable places, as well as more authentic city brands.
... They resonate in the literature that addresses the impacts of event management (for introduction to the ongoing discussion see the special issue of Event Management (11/2) entitled "Beyond economic impacts"). To suggest that this recognition has been ignored in the event management literature is as flawed as suggesting that the leisure industry and leisure studies are not also influenced by similar neo-liberal effects (Bavinton, 2010;Bramham, 2006;Coalter, 1990Coalter, , 1998. ...
Purpose
– The aim of this opinion piece is to seek to cast a critical eye over the event studies field to chart its progress as an emerging area of study, relative to its close relations tourism, hospitality and leisure.
Design/methodology/approach
– Viewpoint approach.
Findings
– The paper highlights various challenges that event educators and researchers face in advancing event studies to discipline status.
Originality/value
– It is timely that, as the quantum of event research and the number of event management education programmes surge, those involved in the field engage in greater critical introspection. This opinion piece attempts to provide such a reflective insight, which has been largely absent from the event studies literature to date.
... Debate on both sides of the globe revolves around themes of moderation and responsibility. While there is a more developed history of public and academic discourse on binge drinking in the UK, for example regarding the relationship with violence, urban regeneration, concerns over licensing hours and gendered media representations (Day, Gough & McFadden 2004, Measham & Brain 2005, Plant & Plant 2006, Hayward and Hobbs 2007), similar concerns emerge in Australian literature (see Tomsen 1997, Bavinton 2010, Kypri, Jones, McElduff & Barker 2011, Waitt et al, 2011). ...
This article introduces the idea of a ‘pedagogy of regret’ to illustrate some of the inadequacies in recent government policy initiatives which target young women's drinking practices. In the Australian context, the National Binge Drinking Campaign warned young women: ‘Don't turn a night out into a nightmare’. A similar British campaign advised individualized drinkers to ‘know their limits’. The rhetorical appeal of these campaigns hinges on the notion of regret: young women will lament the excesses of hedonistic indulgence the morning after given the inevitable consequences of risky behaviour. This paper shows the limitations of such an appeal through a ‘sympathetic online cultural studies’ approach, which we use to explore the nexus between contemporary drinking cultures and the social networking site Facebook. Ordinary and mundane uses of Facebook – status updates anticipating the weekend, mobile posts in the midst of intoxication, photo uploading and album dissemination the morning after – reveal the anticipatory pleasures, everyday preparations and retrospective bonding involved in hedonistic and risky alcohol consumption. This demonstrates the fundamentally social dimensions accompanying young women's drinking. The enjoyment derived from sharing the ‘risky’ and ‘regrettable’ experience on Facebook is part of ongoing narratives between girls. Such pleasures, which are increasingly mediated by social networking sites, confound the notion that young women are haunted by inevitable regret and remorse.
The nightlife sector means the economy and culture but also social wellbeing. However, whenever nightlife does get discussed, it seems always to be about licensing, regulation, crime, culture-led strategies of urban regeneration and urban benchmarking, and we still lack an appropriate understanding about the benefits of night culture beyond these topics. In this critical commentary, I wish to comment on the potential of nightlife as an efficient time–space mechanism for social well-being, community-building and multicultural understanding and even psychological mutual support especially after the Covid-19 pandemic amidst the newly emerging and still undefined world.
Purpose
This study aims to identify the sensory inputs that tourists use to shape their nightlife experiences.
Design/methodology/approach
The situations in three Southeast Asian cities, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore were examined, using tourist reviews posted on tripadvisor.com. A total of 460 data units concerning Bangkok, 373 data units concerning Kuala Lumpur and 453 data units concerning Singapore were compiled and manually analyzed to reveal the frequency of the primary sensory inputs used by the reviewers. Bivariate correlation analysis was additionally performed to reveal the co-occurrences of the sensory inputs that tourists used to form their impressions of each city.
Findings
The findings suggest that gustatory inputs were powerful yet unspecific, while visual inputs were vivid and conspicuous. Audio inputs added certain meaningful contributions to some extent for some tourists. However, the distribution of the sensory inputs differed across the three cities. Moreover, the contributions of the olfactory and tactile inputs are largely missing.
Practical implications
With the management of nightlife businesses (small or micro servicescapes), a thoughtful selection for the drink menu is necessary. When possible, a signature drink should be invented and promoted for each place. With the projection and promotion of tourist destinations as nightlifescapes, a sensory marketing approach should be considered. For example, nightlifescapes could be presented and promoted with unique drinks, good views of the city’s landmarks and interesting local music.
Originality/value
Prior to this study, little research has been carried out to investigate tourists’ nightlife experiences and their impressions of nightlifescapes. In addition, little has been done to identify the sensory inputs that tourists use to explain their experiences and impressions.
The last two decades have witnessed the emergence of a growing interest in the evolution of the urban night. However, the touristification of the urban night has received only limited attention in contemporary social sciences. Until now, academic research has explored night tourism mainly in relation to specific contexts or events: tourist resorts or springbreaks.The focus was placed on the health and safety risks associated with excessive drinking, recreational drug use and casual sex. More recently, researchers have begun to theorize these forms of holiday as a form of temporary departures from the participants' daily lives. While this vision of night tourism as a temporary departure is still dominant, recent studies have revealed a more complex reality. For this reason, this paper proposes the development of a new research agenda aimed at questioning the progressive diversification of tourist practices during the night in the city and the urban issues that these dynamics produce.
I examine the tension between and the treatment of the elements of cultural capital within dynamic mixed-use spaces, and posit that Canada's current noise control and noise pollution legislation, by-laws, and case law demonstrate a hierarchical protection framework placing greater importance on the "quiet enjoyment of private property" over live music culture, where performances are often the subject of noise complaints. While the elements of cultural capital valued by those who favour the value of quiet enjoyment of private property are well represented throughout legislation, by-laws, and case law, the elements of cultural capital valued by those who favour the value of live music venues and events are comparatively unaddressed.
The City of Sydney Council has presented their night-time economy plan (NTE) – Open, Future directions for Sydney at night – as a unique and substantial contribution to global city planning literature. This paper critiques the plan and demonstrates how Open is strongly aligned with, and constrained by the neoliberal-inspired cultural-economy framework of the Council’s overarching policy vision: Sustainable Sydney 2030. Such co-opting of policy evinces an entrepreneurial shift in NTE planning where economic interests procure substantial voice in the consultation, and eventual policy directions of changing the nightscape. The paper explicates the economic imperative(s) of Open within the context of one inner city Sydney suburb, Surry Hills.
This article examines urban food festivals, and in doing so it carries out a case study of Nottingham's food and drink festival (NFDF). It contends that such festivals need to be understood in relation to local contexts, such as the reputation for alcohol-related disorder associated with Nottingham's night-time economy. Rather than being used to attract tourism, NFDF was primarily directed at existing residents of Nottingham, where it sought to produce particular kinds of guests who would be able to invest in the city's wider regeneration. Here, the article draws on recent academic work on hospitality in demonstrating how NFDF attempted to rebrand the city centre as a more hospitable place. It concludes by showing how visitors to NFDF exhibited a sense of generosity and pride, and argues that the meaning of urban food festivals cannot, therefore, simply be reduced to the logic of neoliberal governance.
The growth of high-rise developments raises questions about how the emotional and social leisurescape of the city is evoked, produced and represented. In this article, we examine how advertising images and texts promoting new high-rise developments produce notions of ‘liveability’ through the depiction of idealized spatial experiences that typify urban leisure lifestyles. The focus of our analysis is three high-rise developments in Brisbane, a self-proclaimed ‘New World City’, and the capital of Queensland in Australia's northeast. We identify how marketing images evoke particular emotions to construct desirable relationships between consumers, domestic space and urban leisurescapes. Our analysis revealed social tensions between different constructions of the liveable city and the implications for leisure planning. While Brisbane City Council sought to be inclusive in its planning for urban liveability, developers imagined urban renewal projects through exclusive lifestyle practices and normalized consumer identities (white, middle class, heterosexual, without children).
This paper explores and discusses the fairly recent phenomenon of cultural cluster- ing strategies in the Netherlands. Amongst other things based on ideologies of 'enterprise culture', the quest for urban imagery and positioning strategies, the changing spatial fabric of cities and a search for economic and cultural revitalisation, for the past 5-10 years, the formation of cultural clusters has turned into something of an urban cultural development hype. However, what at first glance appears as a common model, often accompanied by boldly expressed slogans concerning the new role of culture and creativity in the physical and economic revitalisation of cities, in more detail unfolds as an ambivalent and conflict-ridden mixture of cultural, economic, social and spatial interests and sentiments. From a short-term perspective, such an eclectic blending of interests and sentiments might be considered as a good opportunity for urban cultural developments within a 'post-modern' urban development regime. However, from a long-term perspective, there is the danger that the divergent sentiments and interests start to undermine and constrain each other, in the end resulting in adverse effects, mutual distrust and a standstill of developments. Following a detailed investigation of five cultural clustering projects in the Netherlands, and based on Zukin's account of the exchange of cultural and economic values in the contemporary city, the paper argues that, in order to get out of this potentially self-defeating situation, and to enable a more sensitive but also strategic involvement of the cultural sector in the governance of cultural cluster projects, it is necessary to develop a more sophisticated understanding of the complex dynamics involved. Central to this is a locally specific appreciation of the changing interaction between culture (place) and commerce (market) in today's mixed economy of leisure, culture and creativity. This implies both a critique and advancement of existing theories concerning the role of culture in urban development and the development of a more detailed comparative perspective on urban cultural policy projects, thus moving beyond overgeneralised perceptions of the developments concerned.
This article explores the growing interest in 'governance' in relation to the changing roles of markets. states, and partnerships in economic co-ordination. It also comments on the respective tendencies to failure of markets, states and governance. The article first addresses the interest in governance and explains this in terms of recent theoretical developments as well as of fundamental shifts in economic, political, and social life. These latter changes suggest that issues of governance will remain a key issue for a long time and therefore merit careful consideration The logic of 'heterarchic governance' is then contrasted with the respective logics of anarchic. ex post co-ordination through market exchange and of imperative ex ante co-ordination through hierarchical forms of organization. Some preliminary reflections are offered on the nature. forms, and logic of 'governance failure: with special reference to the constraints imposed by global capitalism, the insertion of governance arrangements into the wider political system, and specific dilemmas of governance arrangements themselves. These tendencies to failure are then related to the state's increasing role in 'meta-governance'. namely in managing the respective roles of these different modes of co-ordination. The article concludes with a call for a repertoire of modes of co-ordination.
In the 1990s, cultural analyses have become an integrated part of urban theory, and culture is often seen as an important factor in the interpretation of both the structural changes of society and the multiplicity of life forms. But culture is not only used as a means to understand actual changes; equally often it is used as a tool to create changes. Under the headings of culture and space, culture and place, and culture and urban policy, the article presents a general view of recent urban theoretical attempts to grasp the role of culture, first in a global, secondly in a local and thirdly in an urban political perspective. The analyses of culture and space focus on the central role of culture and the cultural industries in the reconstruction of the economy, which took place after the economic recession in the 1970s. The spatial consequences of this reconstruction are discussed in terms of globalization, polarization and hierarchization. The analyses of culture and place strive to increase the knowledge of how the structural changes have affected the built environment and the social and cultural life of the city. The consequences are often discussed in terms of gentrification, aesthetization and privatization of public space. Special attention is paid to the growing social polarization and segregation. The analyses of culture and urban policy focus on the role of culture in the effort to strengthen the competitiveness of the city. Two different strategies are discussed, an instrumental one which directly aims at economic growth, and an integrative one where the goal is to restore the cultural hegemony.
The planning system was constrained by a neo-liberalist insistence on land-use planning in the 1980s and early 1990s, thereby providing the institutional framework for deregulation of the numbers, capacities and types of licensed premises in town and city centres. This had a direct impact on levels of crime, violence and anti-social behaviour. Criminologists have criticized planners for their complicity in this process. The article argues that entertainment uses have been marginal to the social and ecological preoccupations of the planning profession. It suggests that the reintroduction of spatial planning by the New Labour government has allowed planners to reassert social and environmental objectives into their development plans and potentially to introduce a greater degree of regulatory control. The article examines the changes to the planning system and its complex relation to licensing. Finally, it questions whether this new opportunity for planners to intervene will be realized in the current economic downturn.
The current emphasis on tourism as an economic saviour has increased attention to the activities of city imaging, competitive place-making and the urban redevelopment of redundant inner city land, often into 'festival marketplaces'. This paper will analyse such economic and cultural activity in Australia with particular emphasis on the control of planning discourses by fractions of the state and capital. It will question the processes and projected outcomes of non-metropolitan city imaging and place-marketing by contending that the festival marketplace concept is outmoded and, in Australia, there is a lack of the requisite synchronisation of tiers of government. A case study of Newcastle, New South Wales will be employed to illustrate the relationship between the local and global dimensions of urban tourism.
Cultural planning is a strategic approach to city re-imaging and cultural industries development that variously involves establishing cultural precincts, nurturing creative activity, and re-evaluating public life and civic identity. In the context of varying political configurations and local histories, cultural planning is touted as a policy intervention capable of achieving a wide range of cultural, social, economic and urban outcomes. This article considers key factors leading to, and legitimating, the incorporation of so many aspects of social and human endeavour into cultural planning, and the reasons why cultural planning must inevitably fail in its own terms. Two influences are identified as being particularly important. First, the adoption by cultural planning of an understanding of culture as the entire way of life of a group or community provides theoretical legitimacy for its wide-ranging agenda but is also a source of instability. Second, it is argued that the political priorities of the "Third Way" have been significant factors shaping cultural planning around the world. Central here is the use of cultural planning as a tool for achieving social inclusion and citizenship - aims that are imagined principally in terms of economic accumulation.
Social scientific attention has recently focused upon the private regulation of Britain's burgeoning night-time economy by door supervisors or 'bouncers' as they are more commonly known. Contributing ethnography to this literature, this paper explores bodily risk among doorstaff in Southwest Britain. The commonly perceived association between doorwork and high levels of violence renders this a demonised occupation yet doorstaff may also be in physical danger when policing urban nightspots. Centrally, this participant observational study--grounded in the phenomenological 'foreground' or lived experience of risk-explores bodily danger within the door supervisors' routine night-time contexts. Interrelated social, cultural and economic factors associated with the attenuation, minimisation or avoidance of physical harm are also noted. Describing voluntary and other-imposed occupational health risks, including physical violence and illicit drug-taking, furthers an appreciative understanding of why doorstaff may simultaneously be in danger and dangerous. More formally, this paper, in underscoring the importance of the 'lived body', also supports recent theoretical calls for an embodied sociology. Sociological reflection on health, risk and society, it will be argued, must be grounded in the inescapable corporeality and emotional vicissitudes of actual flesh and blood bodies less it ride roughshod over complex social reality.
As the material form of the city and its symbols are negotiated and contested, the mobilisation of images and identities of place are central to the legitimisation of urban redevelopment. Frequently, these processes and their outcomes consolidate the status of those interests which have long controlled the urban agenda. In this paper I explore (with reference to the deindustrialising regional city of Newcastle, Australia) the extent to which powerful discourses of urban symbolism and the everyday meanings people attach to the places of their social and cultural worlds are implicated in the process of selling to local residents the 'ideal' of the redevelopment of the inner city.
1. Introduction. Making urban nightscapes Part I - Understanding Nightlife Processes and Spaces, Producing, Regulating and Consuming Urban Nightscapes 2. Producing nightlife: Corporatisation, branding and market segmentation in the urban entertainment economy 3. Regulating nightlife: Profit, fun and (dis)order 4. Consuming nightlife: Youth cultural identities, transitions and lifestyle divisions Part II - Urban Nightlife Stories. Experiencing Mainstream, Residual and Alternative Spaces 5. Pleasure, profit and youth in the corporate playground: Branding and gentrification in mainstream nightlife 6. Selling nightlife in studentland 7. Sexing the mainstream: Young women and gay cultures in the night 8. Residual Youth Nightlife: Community, tradition and social exclusion 9. 'You've gotta fight for your right to party'. Alternative nightlife on the margins 10. Nightlife visions. Beyond the corporate nightlife machine
This article focuses on Temple Bar, in Dublin. More specifically the author's aim is to conceptualise and explore the links between cities, urban revitalisation and cultural planning. Temple Bar is presented as an example of how, by linking these concepts to practice in real concrete situations, urban life or urban culture can be created and/or revitalised. The paper is presented in six sections. The first contains a brief history of Temple Bar, setting the scene for the moment of transition which helped trigger the development of the past 5 yr. The second concentrates on the overall approach adopted in Temple Bar, a mixture of culturally led renewal, economic development and urbanism. The third section is a short summary of the area strategy document prepared for An Taoiseach (The Prime Minikster) in early 1991. It is followed by a description of the various implementation mechanisms which have been established. The fifth section discusses some of the detailed programmes and the progress which has been made since September 1991 when the implementation vehicles were fully established. The author concludes with a short discussion of lessons that can be drawn from Temple Bar, which may be of relevance to other urban places. -from Author
This paper discusses the concept of the night-time economy. It describes how many countries in Europe developed schemes to revitalise urban night life. The paper suggests that much of the impetus for the growth of the night-time economy came from new urban social movements, the increasing availability of leisure time, and increasing disposable incomes. The paper highlights how, despite the increasing impact of these features, the night-time economy remains relatively poorly developed in Britain. It suggests explanations for this and how cities might go about developing similar forms of economic activity. The paper concludes by arguing for further research on the concept of 24 hour cities which may, the paper suggests, offer a greener and more sustainable urban environment. -S.Tanner
Nightlife historically has been viewed as a social problem to be contained by licensing, policing and the management of supply. In the context of recent trends towards deregulation of hours and supply, fears have again resurfaced as to the detrimental impact of the 'night-time economy' on street disorder and violence, concerns that have focused attention on the Licensing Act 2003. Utilizing a case study of the regulation of nightlife in the London locality of Southview, this article will explore how there has been ongoing and renewed attention on the problems associated with the night-time economy centred on differentiating between risky and safe cultural and economic forms. The article will argue that the Licensing Act represents a consolidation of over a decade of regulatory change that has 'reordered' regulatory approaches to nightlife; one that has, in combination with other aspects of economic, social and cultural change, been productive of 'subcultural closure'. Copyright (c) 2006 The Authors. Journal Compilation (c) 2006 Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.