Planning the Night-time City

Marion Roberts,Adam Eldridge

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136024702
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

The night-time economy represents a particular challenge for planners and town centre managers. In the context of liberalised licensing and a growing culture around the '24-hour city', the desire to foster economic growth and to achieve urban regeneration has been set on a collision course with the need to maintain social order.

Roberts and Eldridge draw on extensive case study research, undertaken in the UK and internationally, to explain how changing approaches to evening and night-time activities have been conceptualised in planning practice. The first to synthesise recent debates on law, health, planning and policy, this research considers how these dialogues impact upon the design, management, development and the experience of the night-time city.

This is incisive and highly topical reading for postgraduates, academics and reflective practitioners in Planning, Urban Design and Urban Regeneration.

Chapter 1

Introduction

we have developed a new economy in this country, a night-time economy…. One of the few areas where we can develop jobs and where we can create wealth is in the alcohol industry and in the night-time economy – bars, clubs and industries such as fast food.

Dick Hobbs (House of Commons 2005: Q198)

the current phenomenon of youth drinking and town-centre domination may well have peaked. This means that alternative scenarios for town-centre evening life once again become a real possibility.

Ken Worpole (1992: 79)

There is a perception that many town centres across the country have become ‘no go areas’: at certain times of the day or week.

(ACPO 2005: 3)

Town centre development hit the headlines in British newspapers in 2005. This was not because of ambitious schemes by town planners or architects, or because of town hall scandals, but because a new kind of economy had emerged. In his evidence to a Parliamentary Committee, Professor Dick Hobbs identified this new phenomenon as the night-time economy, one which, in its present form at least, is based on alcohol-related entertainment. Hobbs was not the first to coin the term night-time economy, but it has taken root and is now used widely as a catch-all phrase to describe the expansion of nightlife. Alcohol-related nightlife has expanded in most towns and cities across Britain, in many cities in mainland Europe, in parts of the USA and in Australia. In Britain its expansion has been problematic, as the comment made to the same committee from the Association of Chief Police Officers illustrates. The expansion of the night-time economy has become associated with crime, disorder and anti-social behaviour, the antithesis of the type of town centre planners and urban designers are trying to create.

Of course, the incidence of drunkenness in town centres is not new. Ackroyd (2001) describes how London has been awash with alcohol at various times in its long history. Each market town delights in the numbers of historic pubs it contains. Although the twentieth century is normally portrayed as one in which the strict licensing laws introduced during the First World War led to sobriety, the 1980s saw a concern with ‘lager louts’ in provincial towns and champagne excesses by ‘hooray Henrys’ in the cities (Ramsay 1990). The optimistic quotation from Worpole in the early 1990s came from his analysis of the trends which he and his associates thought would lead towards more inclusive, less alcohol-based night-time activities in towns and cities.

Sadly, their predictions were flawed and the remaining decade-and-a-half saw an unprecedented rise in a youth-dominated, alcohol-soaked nighttime economy. That they could forecast another type of future is evidence that the type of night-time economy that has evolved was not inevitable. Moreover, they asserted that the character of night-time activities, including everyday behaviours such as going to the pub, are an important component of the character of a town, and as such are of interest to planners and urban designers. In essence, these are the two themes that have shaped this book.

Perspectives on the night-time economy

A debate on the nature and root causes of the ills of the night-time economy was played out in three issues of the professional journal Town and Country Planning in 2004 (Hadfield 2004; Montgomery 2004a, 2004b). The event that stimulated the exchange was the anticipation of the implementation of the Licensing Act 2003 in England and Wales, which, amongst other things, allowed 24-hour drinking and passed the responsibility for licensing from magistrates to local authorities. At that time, it was anticipated that the Act would come into force in January 2005, whereas in fact it was delayed until November of that year. The protagonists in the debate were John Montgomery, a town planner, and Philip Hadfield, a criminologist and licensing expert.

Montgomery defended his involvement in the early expansion of the night-time economy. As a member of a group of urban theorists and cultural consultants, he had argued for the liberalization of licensing laws. This has resulted in what he has since termed the ‘tyranny of yob culture’, due to both a lack of management of the city at night and to ‘something deeply engrained in the psyche of the English which causes them to drink too much’ (2004b: 83). Hadfield, in response, pointed out that the cultural theorists who had championed deregulation should have foreseen the consequences of a commercially driven expansion. He went on to argue that blaming the consumer is the ‘easy option’ that ignores the role the aggressive and powerful drinks and entertainment industries played in shaping demand. In response, Montgomery argued that some local authorities ignored his colleague’s recommendations for local strategies to accompany deregulation and that big business could not be blamed for lack of self-responsibility on the part of consumers. He reasserted binge drinking as a peculiarly English problem, in contrast to Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Ireland, the USA and Australia. The problems of drunken bad behaviour, Montgomery suggested, lay in English ‘mass culture’.

This book explores and extends this debate. The exchanges between Hadfield and Montgomery demonstrate the importance of understanding the growth and evolution of the night-time economy in Britain. The interpretation of its dynamic has a direct impact on the interventions proposed in response. Although there might seem to be an agreement between both protagonists that better management at the local level is required, combined with national guidance, this superficial resolution masks a series of deeper issues, debates and dilemmas. These are bound together in a complex pattern that resists simple, localized formulas.

The unusual status of alcohol as a legalized drug is a thread that draws together many of the issues. As the sub-title of the World Health Organization’s report No Ordinary Commodity (Babor et al. 2003) implies, the problems associated with the spatial and temporal organization of premises that sell alcohol are not the same as those that supply food, or furniture or clothes. The extensive literature produced by health academics provides evidence of the many dangers and hazards associated with excess consumption. Although alcohol is a dangerous and addictive drug, it nevertheless plays a critical role in social rituals in many societies across the globe. The consumption of alcohol is part of everyday life and indeed defines and forms national and local cultures. The ‘cultural theorists’ represented by Montgomery recognized its importance in underpinning many activities related to town planning, such as eating out in cafés and restaurants, and in entertainment.

Cultural attitudes and expectations have shaped perceptions of ‘the night’ too. The night is commonly represented and understood according to the opposing narratives of fear and pleasure. Although electrification has diminished distinctions between night and day in developed countries for the best part of a century, the historical legacy of the night’s power to transform landscapes and people still shapes activities and behaviours. Flexible working, the expansion of the creative industries and digital communication are gradually blurring previously sharp distinctions between work and leisure and between day-time and nighttime. Part of the discussion about the formation of the night-time economy concerns the extent to which activities traditionally associated with the day-time, such as shopping, exercise, education or cultural consumption, for example, visiting art exhibitions or libraries, are able or are enabled to extend into the night.

The extension of the economics of the day-time into spatial and temporal planning for the night provides the sharpest cause for debate with regard to town planning and the night-time city. As the clash between Montgomery and Hadfield demonstrates, the adoption of ‘entrepreneurial city’ policies by cash-strapped local authorities in the expansion of their night-time economies could be regarded as either misguided, naïve or wilfully negligent. The extent to which the problems associated with unrestrained expansion could or should have been foreseen is not of purely historical interest. If the transformation of previously quiet town centres into ‘no-go’ areas could have been accurately forecast, then these insights can assist in future planning far beyond the current recession.

However, there is disagreement about the extent to which the expansion of the night-time economy is regarded as a ‘problem’. While academic criminologists have no interest in denial, town councils who wish to attract tourists, investment and business into their centres have little appetite for their portrayal as a ‘no-go’ area after dark. City centre residents are sometimes portrayed as the proverbial NIMBYs (not in my back yard), yet they too have little incentive to reduce the sales potential of their properties. The police are in an ambiguous position too: on the one hand they need to argue for extra resources but, on the other, do not wish to make public their lack of control.

Expansion in nightlife has been further complicated by two partially related trends: the growth of tourism and the extensive corporatization of youth culture and late-night entertainment. Whereas much of the debate in the British media draws on stereotypes of the ‘pub’ and the British drinker, low-cost travel to mainland Europe has altered expectations and attitudes. An idealized model of a supposedly relaxed ‘urbanity’ is constructed in debate and serves as a point of reference. Tourism, and the need to enhance its growth, underpins much of contemporary government policy towards consumption. Meanwhile, the shift of youth culture away from illegal raves into ‘super-clubs’ and other similar venues has re-shaped mainstream provision in the high street. In the drive towards economic expansion, providers have focused on the potential of the youth market, privileging this over more restrained styles of consumption.

In the same way that it is necessary to consider investors, developers and occupiers when analysing the office market, nightlife is shaped by investment, regulation, operators, promoters and consumers (Chatterton and Hollands 2002). The extent to which the problems thrown up by an expansion of nightlife may be ascribed to the structures of ownership and investment is debatable (Chatterton and Hollands 2003; Hollands and Chatterton 2003). The argument that the corporate ownership of nightlife provides a relentless driver for greater profits is compelling. This would suggest, though, that in cities outside Britain, with a different pattern of ownership, the problems may be alleviated or different. Whether problems are caused by a proliferation of venues, or by particular types of establishment, is a moot point. Debate revolves around competition, between bars and clubs packed together in a drinking circuit indulging in price wars with each other, or between supermarkets who use alcohol as a loss leader, thereby encouraging customers to ‘pre-load’, that is drink alcohol at home, before a night out.

The spatial distribution and configuration of different types of venues has historically been regulated through two different types of regulatory regimes in Britain, town planning and licensing. Changes to the licensing laws have maintained the division between the two sets of regimes, not always beneficially. Both frameworks have to contend with a historical legacy of location and conditions. This would suggest that the problems of crime, disorder and noise can be mainly ascribed to past concentrations, where patterns of provision and consumption were different. Sadly, this is not the case. As the academic studies have noted, many of the problems of excess have occurred in regenerated former industrial zones, as well as historic town centres. Even completely newly built masterplanned districts, such as the Riverside district in Norwich, are not immune. These observations suggest that both planning and licensing need to acquire a deeper understanding of the dynamics of the nighttime economy and the extent to which it can be embedded in different types of urban landscape.

Understanding and representing the views of consumers poses a challenge for researchers. Not only are patterns of consumption varied (Jayne et al. 2006), there is also the issue of latent demand (Eldridge and Roberts 2008). Representations of consumers become loaded with moral meaning and connotation, between the ‘desirable’ image of the restrained theatre-goer and the representation of the ‘urban savage’. The extent to which people may be manipulated by an unscrupulous alcohol and entertainment industry is a key point of departure for policy. If the fault does indeed lie with the individual, then anti-social behaviour must be remediated by harsh control, even if this risks criminalizing large numbers of young and not so young people. If the fault lies with ill-conceived or inappropriate deregulation, then the government needs to intervene, even if this is at odds with current conceptions of a self-regulating market and a discourse of partnership between public and private interests. Not only is the ‘hidden hand’ of the market shaping provision on the ground, there are other equally important variables that shape consumer behaviours, such as class, ethnicity or gender.

In his debate with Hadfield, Montgomery laughs at himself for having proposed as an image of urbanity, ‘visions of an elegant café society, with British people strolling about civilized streets as the Italians do – pullover draped over the shoulders, an attractive woman on one’s arm’. It goes without saying that this particular image is middle-class, male, white and heterosexual. The point remains about how to construct an alternative vision for nightlife, inclusive of different sexualities, ethnicities, ages and social class. As Skeggs has pointed out, there is a repugnance frequently expressed about ‘drunk, fat and vulgar’ (Skeggs 2005: 965) working-class women enjoying themselves. Talbot and Bose have demonstrated how the contemporary night-time economy has also privileged white interests, even in areas where there are highly motivated ethnic minority entrepreneurs and audiences (Talbot 2007; Talbot and Bose 2007). The extent to which the night is represented as exotic, a ‘liminal’ zone in which the notion of normality is reconfigured, is therefore problematic. Such representations are in themselves exclusive, and exclusionary, and deter other interpretations of the evening and night as say, a locus for family excursions or for more mundane activities such as shopping, or going to a meeting of a local interest group.

The manner in which activities at night are produced, bounded, represented, performed and regulated draws in debates from criminology, health studies, sociology, moral philosophy, cultural geography, urban design and town planning. Ultimately, nightlife is experienced through the body, in material places and spaces. This book focuses on the external street environment rather than the dynamics within venues themselves. Hobbs and his colleagues have conducted intensive and high-quality research on door staff, who are the front-line between the two arenas (Hobbs et al. 2003). We therefore refer readers to this body of work and instead aim to bring to the fore the issues and aspects of the contemporary night-time economy that will be of interest to built-environment professionals. We explore these issues because we believe that they are important to the future development of ‘shaping places’ in the construction of everyday life. Increasing urbanization provides a potential for greater use of the hours after dark for activities outside the home. That the ability to be in public at night is so constrained is a matter of regret. The limitations and self-limitations that result in only 15 per cent of over-55s venturing into town centres (ODPM 2005c) after dark is surely a loss to society, to human experience and to urbanity in its wider sense.

Furthermore, we are sympathetic to the aims of the government’s policy for an ‘urban renaissance’ that seeks to encourage town and city centre living. The expulsion of housing from many British town centres can be attributed to the norms and practices of modernist town planning, with its designation of mono-functional zones that dispersed a more vital mix of uses into soulless housing estates and industrial parks. In turning the clock back to nineteenth-century patterns, old conflicts have re-emerged. Whereas in the nineteenth century complaints were heard about the noxious fumes and noise emanating from factories, now in the twenty-first century residents complain about the noise and disorder coming from the streets as the new ‘drinking factories’ disgorge their clientele at 3 a.m. into their waiting coaches and cabs.

Of course, it might be argued that it is not only the production of the built environment that shapes places at night. Other factors play an important part, as has been recognized by the town centre management movement. Transport, parking, street cleansing, lighting and policing all contribute to the experience, as does the detailed design of the public realm. The significance is not purely local, for many major nightclubs have a regional catchment. As in the day-time, issues of payment for extra services arise, for extra policing and security, cleansing and so forth. Whether these should fall on the shoulders of the public or private sectors leads back to the discussion of ‘boosterism’, of the morality of encouraging the over-consumption of alcohol, of the way in which ‘the night’ is shaped and framed by policy and regulation, and of the rights and responsibilities of the individual.

In concentrating on the mainstream, we have had to ignore other activities traditionally associated with ‘the night’, such as sex work and illegal drug use. This is partly for reasons of space, but mainly as a result of the empirical research that has provided the justification for writing this book. This research has focused on environmental management and has largely been of a practical nature. It is to this that we shall turn to next.

Empirical research

The research projects on which this book is based have been localized, and have investigated the themes raised by licensing deregulation in England and Wales. The investigations have drawn upon Chatterton and Hollands’ (2002) framing of the night-time economy in terms of producers, regulators and consumers.

A study of Old Compton Street in London’s Soho used time-lapsed video- and audio-recording techniques to identify the extent and nature of the disruption caused by the numbers of people on the street throughout a summer weekend in 2002 (Roberts and Turner 2005). The results were analysed through pedestrian counts and represented in graphs and charts. A similar technique for analysis was used in an unpublished study for an inner-London borough which had commissioned its own observational studies of pedestrian flows and incidents of anti-social behaviour. We also used direct observational techniques as part of our study of five night-time economy ‘hot spots’ in different town centres in England. Here...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Cities at night
• 3 Visions of the night-time city
• 4 Party cities
• 5 Binge-drinking Britain?
• 6 Regulating consumption: mainland Britain
• 7 Regulating licensing: the dream of a continental style of drinking
• 8 Planning and managing the night-time city: rhetoric and pragmatism
• 9 Consumers
• 10 Night-time cities, night-time futures
• Bibliography
• Index