Tender for the night: After-dark cultural complexities in the night-time economy

Abstract

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.

Notes

1. The main research on which this article is based was funded by a 2008–2010 Australian Research Council Discovery Grant The city after dark: The governance and lived experience of urban night-time culture (DP0877906). Chief Investigators are Professors Deborah Stevenson, Stephen Tomsen, and David Rowe; Nathaniel Bavinton was the Research Assistant until July 2010, and Phillip Wadds its ‘embedded’ PhD candidate. Empirical research across three urban contexts took place in the following forms and time-frames: In the city of Newcastle field observations and 22 in-depth interviews with nightlife participants between January 2006 and March 2008. In the city of Parramatta field observations and two focus groups with stakeholders between February 2007 and February 2008. In six case sites across metropolitan Sydney field observations, 30 in-depth interviews with key stakeholders, and an online survey completed by 315 nightlife participants between December 2008 and June 2010.