“Reclaiming Northbridge”: Urban (Dis)Order and Territorial Stigmatisation in Perth’s Night Time Economy precinct

Abstract

Cutting across three waves of Night-Time Economy (NTE) research, this paper is concerned with (i) the entrepreneurial shift in urban governance from which the strategic planning and development of NTEs arose; (ii) the stigma that came to surround some NTE precincts as these deregulated spaces became characterised as violent and disorderly; and (iii) the processes of securitisation and gentrification that are reterritorialising NTE spaces. The paper draws on the concept of territorial stigmatisation in presenting a case study of Northbridge – the largest nightlife precinct in the West Australian capital of Perth – exploring the media-circulated discursive utterances of a range of actors with symbolic power (politicians, business people, the police, bureaucrats, reporters, etc.), the stigmatised image of Northbridge (re)produced and reified by these utterances, and the suite of interventions these images have legitimated. These interventions, it is argued, constitute a process of reterritorialisation that is reordering and redefining who and what is (un)desirable and included/excluded. In doing so, they erode the counter spaces of the NTE – spaces where counter-hegemony and difference can take place, and which constitute the liberating potential of nightlife.

本文纵览关于夜间经济（Night-Time Economy, NTE）三次浪潮的研究，试图探讨（1）导致夜间经济战略规划和发展的城市治理企业化转型；（2）缺少监管导致的暴力和混乱成为某些夜间经济场所的标签；（3）安全化和中产化进程正在改变夜间经济地域。本文以地域偏见的概念为基础，介绍了北桥（Northbridge）的个案研究。这是西澳大利亚州首府帕斯最大的夜生活地区。文章就此分析了媒体报道中具有象征权力的各方行为主体（政界人士、商界人士、警察、官员、记者等）的话语、这些话语对北桥的形象（不断）产生和不断强化的偏见，以及这些形象所引发的各种干预。文章认为，这些干预措施实际上是一个重新划分地域的过程，它重新规定了谁以及什么是好的/坏的，谁以及什么应该得到保留/祛除。就在这一过程中，夜间经济的抗衡空间——反垄断及包含着夜生活的解放潜力的不同空间——遭到侵蚀。

Keywords:

• Night time economy
• territorial stigmatisation
• disorder
• gentrification
• Perth

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express our thanks to the anonymous referees for their constructive comments. Additionally, we would like to thank Kurt Iveson, Craig Lyons and Dallas Rogers for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.