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.