Parties, Planners, and Publics: From Memory of Nights Out to Urban Planning on Union Street

Abstract

This article explores notions of publicness in relation to the recent history of Union Street, Plymouth, drawing on personal reflection and policy research. Until 2002, I would go ‘downtown’ to this street most weekends, often multiple times a week. Union Street and its many venues were notorious for DJs, cheap drinks, dancing, flirtatious or sexual interactions, violent encounters, and drugs. By 2010 most of its venues had closed, with the street and surrounding area falling into significant economic decline. Framing the street’s past activities through Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the carnivalesque and Stephen Lyng’s investigation of edgework, this article repositions the street’s negative image in relation to theories of publicness. On this basis, I present a critique of planning policies that contributed to the physical and conceptual marginalisation of the area. Varied and pluralistic notions of publicness offer a means by which the recent activities of arts and cultural organisations in this area of Plymouth can be analysed, while also offering a way for me to reflect on my own positionality relative to Union Street - a research context and a scene of close personal memories.