---

faculty | home | people | work | events | hyperlinks | help

CITIES AND THE NIGHT TIME ECONOMY
PART I

First published in Planning Practice and Research, Vol.10, No.2, 1995

Email: a.lovatt@mmu.ac.uk and j.oconnor@mmu.ac.uk

I Introduction

The 1980's saw the re-emergence of a concern with city centres as focal points for, and as symbolic of, a specifically urban way of life seemingly eroded in the 1970s. Although questions of social justice and local democracy remained these new concerns pushed cultural questions to the fore. The context of this shift was complex but we can pick out what we would consider to be the main features.

The first aspect is the de-industrialisation of older industrial areas which left large areas of older city centres derelict with the consequent shattering of local and regional identity brought on by this economic crisis - and which this dereliction powerfully symbolised. Whole cities and regions which had grown up around an industrial production rooted in place and central to the formation of the working and living patterns of the local population now found themselves radically undermined. This was not only related to the devastating effects of long term structural unemployment but also with a wider sense of loss of purpose; of identity. In the industrial cities of Northern England, Scotland, Northern France, the Ruhr and The Netherlands, a collective identity crisis could be perceived in the early 1980s. Ugly grim cities they may have been, but formerly they produced, they made for the world. Now they were just ugly and grim.

The second aspect of this shift is the revalorisation of city centre sites in the development boom which began in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Hanging on in many cities in the mid 1970s the Central Business Districts (CBDs) represented a fixed capital that companies were extremely reluctant to write off. This was not just in terms of buildings but also of land (Harvey, 1985a; 1989). The rise of footloose capital in the context of 70s restructuring meant that investment capital was available to recoup the 'true' value of the CBD. Crucial to this strategy was a reinvention or re-emphasis on the prestige of centrality. New city centre offices, as well as residential and leisure developments emphasised this centrality through a promotion of the unique value of urbanity - signs and images of urban living that had atrophied in the 1960s and 1970s or had acquired purely negative connotations. This revalorisation however was not just aimed at the CBD. In the new regeneration models of the North American developers, those areas adjacent to the CBD were more than a bonus windfall, they were central to the regeneration package. Not just the real estate value but also the 'cultural capital' (Bourdieu, 1984; Harvey, 1989) represented by 'downtowns' were to be recouped by the developers - recreating them as sites of a new 'urbanity' centred around leisure, up market consumption, and prestigious residential living intended to signal this new 'urbanity' using echoes of the 'new bohemianism' of 1970s pioneer gentrification (Zukin 1981; 1991)

The third aspect is the emergence of city-to-city competitiveness at a national and supranational level where the management of the local image was deemed to be crucial in an increasingly globalised market-place. This image was tied to the cultural facilities and 'vibrancy' of the city centre. If de-industrialisation was about the abstraction of production from place, and if the 'post-industrial' economies were about footloose service sector workers, then cities with a bad image would lose out. Unfortunately, the problem was that city authorities often had little knowledge of the cultural sector, which was moved from a peripheral to a central place in local policy making in ways that often involved a crass and heavy-handed opportunism. This caused tension within the cultural sector, as those working within the cultural field were faced with a whole new set of external demands and indices of success. It also caused tensions within the local area as 'high culture' was given precedence in funding programmes. In addition it created tensions within the local polity as planners trained to deal with the city as a system of objective factors (Hall, P 1988) were faced with notions of urban cultures and spaces that few were equipped to deal with.

The fourth aspect was the reorganisation of city centres around consumption rather than production. If planners were faced with an emphasis on urban culture and space, demanding more fluid approaches to regulation, the more immediate and powerful pressures for a retreat from regulation stemmed from the market - often backed up with political expediency. In the 1980s the (unevenly) revalorised city centre emerged as a new landscape of buildings, enterprises and signs concerned with the organisation and exploitation of consumption. This economy of consumption (distribution and marketing), unlike the economy of the production and exchange of goods (manufacturing and trade) had a much looser relationship to the local area. The big players in this new consumer economy were global, and in their establishment at the heart of the new city centre they radically redrew the boundaries of local and global in the city. It was not just that all city centres began to look the same but that the relation to place, to the local involved in this globalised consumption was made increasingly tenuous.

The fifth aspect, following on from this shift from the city of production to the city of consumption, involved the more central role ascribed to leisure and the arts, but also to that re-invention of urbanity which had been invoked by urban regeneration projects. However superficial and spatially circumscribed - driving through decaying 'inner cities' to then experience 'urbanity' in a secure zone given over to culture and consumption - the emphasis on play (the carnivalesque, the festival, the fair), strolling and idle socialising could have wider effects. These activities, which had previously been regarded as secondary or marginal to the 'real' business of the city began to question what the city (both universal and particular) could and should be. The same was true of the enhanced value of centrality. This 'new urbanism' was an idea taken up by others besides city governments and developers. It opened up spaces for local cultural creation and entrepreneurial activity.

The sixth aspect refers to those complex shifts out of which this latter process emerged. The definition of culture was in flux under the impact of its massive commodification and the radically transformed lifestyle patterns that had emerged since the late 1960s. In this context state and local state subsidy for culture could not stay the same, neither with respect to its objectives, to those activities it funded; nor to the form in which it was given. Cultural policy in this context demanded a complete rethink - and not merely by those already involved in 'culture'. It began to ask question of those involved in urban design and planning, and of those agencies concerned with local economic development. As these latter groups began to look for something called 'culture' the very processes which were compelling them to search for the beast had changed shape. The night-time economy is one of these strange beasts.

FEEDBACK WELCOMED

Send email to: a.lovatt@mmu.ac.uk and j.oconnor@mmu.ac.uk