Youth Drinking in Public Places: The Production of Drinking Spaces in and Outside Nightlife Areas

Abstract

This article explores youth drinking in Zurich, Switzerland, on both public squares away from nightlife areas, referred to as ‘square street drinking’ and on the street within the vicinity of nightclubs, defined as ‘club street drinking’. Taking a relational space approach, the analysis adds a social perspective to the dominant economic-political perspective to drinking in urban nightlife zones. The results suggest that the normative landscapes of drinking are constructed differently: the same regulation by police and social workers works differently between the two areas both in terms of inclusion and exclusion as well as in terms of how the material and social dimensions interact. Production and regulation are dependent on how young people participate in these processes. This finding suggests that it would be fruitful to develop a regulation approach on drinking in the post-industrial city that is sensitive to young people as co-producers of space.