Strangers in the night: nightlife studies and new urban tourism

ABSTRACT

This paper draws together recent scholarship from the study of urban tourism and nightlife. Though studies of urban tourism do not always specifically address nightlife, and likewise studies of the night and nightlife do not always examine tourism, both bodies of research overlap in important ways. Concerns about commercialisation, gentrification, displacement, and urban change are to be found in both bodies of research. However, while the study of urban tourism typically recognises the erasure of the host / guest binary and seeks to destabilise the notion of who is a tourist or stranger, studies of nightlife often rest on a much clearer distinction between who belongs and who does not. An argument proposed here is that while the host / guest, tourist / non-tourist binary is perhaps reconfiguring, the night and nightlife spaces reinstate these binaries in various ways. This paper thinks through debates about tourists and residents in the night, focusing in particular on questions of belonging, place identification and gentrification through night-time uses.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban tourism
• night-time economy
• nightlife
• mobility

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Adam Eldridge http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9262-8983