Alcohol, Young People and Urban Life

Abstract

AbstractMoving beyond the current academic pre‐occupation with the night‐time economy and drinking venues, this paper highlights the specificities of outdoor drinking cultures in streets and parks. Instead of viewing outdoor drinking as morally transgressive – as promoted in the popular press – it is contended that outdoor drinkscapes are distinctly appealing over commercial premises for some young urbanites. Streets and parks enable young people to feel socially and physically unrestricted whilst consuming alcohol; provide a space where young people can drink with friends who are not old enough to consume alcohol in commercial premises; and allow drinkers a chance to consume relatively cheap alcohol. Accounts of young people in urban public spaces are typically one of intergenerational conflict, whereby adults seek to exclude or marginalise young people or, at least, try to control their presence and activities. However, in attempting to understand young people's alcohol consumption experiences in outdoor urban spaces, a series of complex personal geographies emerge in which not only adult–young people relations but also young people–young people relations play an important role. Whilst some progress has been made in exposing the diversity of young people's drinkscapes, it is argued that much of the existing literature renders young people's drinking spaces static, bounded terrains. This paper turns to suggest that the ‘new mobilities paradigm’ can be drawn upon to develop and enrich the geographies of young urbanites' outdoor alcohol consumption experiences. It is argued that the extant literature on alcohol‐related mobilities is predominantly concerned with a ‘pointillist’ understanding of mobility. It is contended that Bissell's () alternative conceptualisation of mobility as a ‘loop’ is a more apt means of capturing the more pointless every night mobilities of many young people; particularly the mobilities of those who are not old enough/choose not to consume alcohol in commercial premises, and choose instead to spend their evenings traversing outdoor drinkscapes. It is also asserted that the embodied, emotional and affective elements of young people's alcohol‐related im/mobilities need to be much more prominent if understandings of the lived experiences of young urbanites' drinking geographies are to be unearthed.