Night-time Economy Research Articles

Situational crime prevention at nightclub entrances in Perth, Western Australia: Exploring micro-level crime precipitators

There has been a significant increase in the use of physical security measures in Western cities over the past 30 years and situational crime prevention has become increasingly popular. During this period, the night-time economy (NTE) has become a significant area for international research. Much of the research has concentrated on investigating and regulating for improved security of nightclubs and licensed premises. Homel and Tomsen and Walker have previously argued that door security was most in need of regulation. Since then, a variety of security measures, initiatives and technology has been used to control entry points to licensed premises, including CCTV, doormen (bouncers) and identification scanners. Following Wortley’s concept of crime precipitators, it has been suggested that poor governance can inadvertently create crime precipitators at the meso, macro and micro level of the NTE. This article adopts a grounded theory approach to explore the micro-level governance of nightclub entrances in Perth, Western Australia. Using observational data collected from fieldwork over several years, the authors ask the question ‘what does the entrance “say”, about the licensed premises?’ How are different venues perceived and how might excessive security measures operate to precipitate crime?

Self-reported physiological and psychological side-effects of an acute alcohol and energy drink dose

Objective: There have been repeated calls from health professionals and policy-makers to clarify the side-effects of the increasingly popular consumption trend of alcohol mixed with energy drinks (AmED). There is a dearth of research assessing the differential effects of AmED relative to alcohol by comparing self-reported psychological and physiological outcomes whilst under the influence of these substances. The aim of the present study was to examine the acute effects of a moderate alcohol and energy drink (ED) dose on self-reported psychological and physiological outcomes. Method: Using a single-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover design, 28 adults completed four sessions where they were administered: (i) 0.50g/kg alcohol, (ii) 3.57mL/kg ED, (iii) AmED, and (iv) placebo. Participants independently completed the Profile of Mood States and a Somatic Symptom Scale at baseline and at 30 and 125min after beverage administration. Results: Breath alcohol concentration peaked at .068% and .067% in the alcohol and AmED conditions, respectively. There were no interactive alcohol and ED effects on self-reported psychological outcomes. Treatment effects for physiological outcomes generally only related to alcohol or ED administration, with the exception of a moderate magnitude decrease in heart palpitation ratings following alcohol relative to AmED. Decreased muscular tension ratings were evident when the two constituents were consumed separately relative to placebo. Conclusions: The results provide evidence of few subjective changes in physiological and psychological state after consuming AmED relative to alcohol. The majority of treatment-based changes arose from the independent effects of alcohol or ED, rather than being modified by their interaction. However, research extending into higher dosage domains is required to increase outcome generalisability for consumers in the night-time economy.

All-Wales licensed premises intervention (AWLPI): a randomised controlled trial to reduce alcohol-related violence

BackgroundAlcohol-related violence in and in the vicinity of licensed premises continues to place a considerable burden on the United Kingdom’s (UK) health services. Robust interventions targeted at licensed premises are therefore required to reduce the costs of alcohol-related harm. Previous evaluations of interventions in licensed premises have a number of methodological limitations and none have been conducted in the UK. The aim of the trial was to determine the effectiveness of the Safety Management in Licensed Environments intervention designed to reduce alcohol-related violence in licensed premises, delivered by Environmental Health Officers, under their statutory authority to intervene in cases of violence in the workplace.Methods/DesignA national randomised controlled trial, with licensed premises as the unit of allocation. Premises were identified from all 22 Local Authorities in Wales. Eligible premises were those with identifiable violent incidents on premises, using police recorded violence data. Premises were allocated to intervention or control by optimally balancing by Environmental Health Officer capacity in each Local Authority, number of violent incidents in the 12 months leading up to the start of the project and opening hours. The primary outcome measure is the difference in frequency of violence between intervention and control premises over a 12 month follow-up period, based on a recurrent event model. The trial incorporates an embedded process evaluation to assess intervention implementation, fidelity, reach and reception, and to interpret outcome effects, as well as investigate its economic impact.DiscussionThe results of the trial will be applicable to all statutory authorities directly involved with managing violence in the night time economy and will provide the first formal test of Health and Safety policy in this environment. If successful, opportunities for replication and generalisation will be considered.Trial registrationUKCRN 14077; ISRCTN78924818.

‘Christians, out here?’ Encountering Street-Pastors in the post-secular spaces of the UK’s night-time economy

This paper explores the concept of the post-secular city by examining the growing presence of Street-Pastors in the night-time economy of British cities. Street-Pastors are Christian volunteers who work to ensure the safety of people on a ‘night out’. We contribute to work that has called for greater attention to be placed on the ways in which religious faith and ethics are performed to create liminal spaces of understanding in urban areas. Drawing upon in-depth ethnographic research conducted in a range of UK towns and cities, we consider this distinct form of faith-based patrolling in relation to the spatial processes and practices of urban-nightscapes. By exploring the geographies of Street-Pastors, we not only contribute to more nuanced accounts of ‘drinking spaces’ but provide an empirical engagement with the growing body of work on urban rhythms and encounters.

Holding back the beers: maintaining ‘youth’ identity within the British night-time leisure economy

An expanding body of work on Britain's night-time alcohol-based leisure economy has acknowledged the importance of collective forms of alcohol consumption in the establishment and reinforcement of key aspects of both subjective and group youth identities. This research project has addressed the ways in which drinking behaviours and leisure characteristics usually applied to 18–25 year olds are retained and continue to structure the identities of older consumers of the night-time leisure experience. Field data suggest that in the absence of traditional forms of community and social order, the night-time economy now functions as the field upon which many people attempt to develop a sense of communitas and belonging. However, there is also crucial critical evidence to suggest that these consumers are essentially encouraged to heed the siren call of contemporary ideology by consistently reaffirming their commitment to consumer markets that often fail to yield the pleasures and freedoms associated with them. Not taking part in the commodified pleasures of the drinking strip can have a quite profound impact upon the individual, and the perceived freedoms of alcohol-fuelled hedonism often continue to draw the adult consumer towards social behaviours that act against the construction of stable adult identities.

Beyond night-time economy: Affective atmospheres of the urban night

This paper develops the use of the concept of atmosphere in an ‘assemblage urbanism’ approach, as a way of reevaluating how we understand the night-time city. In doing so, this paper rejects what it sees as an overuse of the term ‘night-time economy’ as a synonym for ‘urban night’. Instead, it seeks to describe the night-time city center as an affective atmosphere, emerging from the arranging of practices, bodies and materials. In this vision, an affective atmosphere is best understood as a form of ‘placed assemblage’. My studies of taxi drivers and street cleaners in a British city are used to illustrate and explore how this occurs, drawing from an analytic framework developed out of the work of Deleuze and Guattari. As such, this paper offers a broader vision of the urban night, which sees the perspective taken by ‘night-time economy studies’ as reflecting just a portion of the practices which generate the affective atmosphere of the night-time city center.

‘License to drink’: White-collar female workers and Japan’s urban night space

This article examines the contradictory processes that have given women a greater access to Japan’s urban night space as the increasingly flexible work environment offered them white-collar employment opportunities and enhanced women’s economic resources, which in turn generated shifts in commercial practices to de-problematize drinking for women and a proliferation of diverse drinking venues. This study contends that these changes, which are largely commercially driven and not necessarily reflecting a stronger social acceptance of women drinking in public late at night by the broader Japanese society, nonetheless legitimize women’s place in the once male-dominated urban night space by recognizing women’s contributions to the night-time economy as consumers, hence affirming also the importance of white-collar work for women as a valid realm.

Fear of crime and affective ambiguities in the night-time economy

This article analyses fear of crime in the night-time economy as an event that emerges from, and unfolds as part of, the on-going encounters with human and non-human elements in particular places. A conceptual approach to understanding fear of crime is elaborated that highlights the role of ambiguity, meaning that a particular element does not have stable, well-determined effects on fear of crime, and the importance of thinking of fear as the folding of immediate futures and the past into the experienced present. Drawing on empirical research with university students in Utrecht, the Netherlands, the article explores how lighting, policing and the presence of ‘undesired others’ affect fear. Multiple forms of ambiguity are shown to exist, suggesting that interventions in the built environment and zero-tolerance policing tactics are unlikely to reduce fear of crime in the night-time economy as much as past research, influential policy and media discourses have suggested.

Briefing: A strategic direction for Liverpool's gay village

The Stanley Street area is widely recognised as the ‘gay village’ of Liverpool with an identity as the centre of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGB&T) scene. It hosts a vibrant night-time economy comprising bars, pubs and clubs that cater for the LGB&T community. Feria Urbanism, a Bournemouth-based urban design practice, was commissioned by Liverpool City Council to develop a strategic direction for the area. The project investigated a wide range of topics, including the redesign of the street, the creation of a new public space, the use of planning controls, architectural modifications to listed buildings and traffic management.

Experiencing and governing safety in the night-time economy: Nurturing the state of being carefree

Against a background of widespread academic and policy interest in fear and security in urban consumption spaces across the Global North this paper explores subjective experiences of safety and the way these may be (un)affected by CCTV and on-street policing. Adopting a phenomenological perspective and drawing on the narratives of nightlife consumers in three Dutch cities (Utrecht, Rotterdam, Groningen), we propose to conceptualise safety as a range of 'meta-stable' experiential states. In the first and basic state we termed ‘absorptive coping’, nightlife consumers interact with the world as if on auto-pilot and are carefree; they are unconcerned about their safety and experience no trouble or worries. This state is suspended when consumers become ‘on the alert’. ‘Actual danger’ occurs when consumers perceive one or more individuals with the intention to do harm. We find that surveillance and policing practices can induce and affect transitions between the identified states. CCTV has marginal effects in this regard; on-street policing is more effective in preventing the states of being on the alert or actual danger and in shifting consumers back to absorptive coping. Yet, police presence and practices can also be counter-productive, triggering unease in consumers and suspending absorptive coping. Implications for the surveillance and policing of urban consumption spaces are outlined.

‘Alive after five’: Constructing the neoliberal night in Newcastle upon Tyne

The development of the ‘night-time economy’ in the UK through the 1990s has been associated with neoliberal urban governance. Academics have, however, begun to question the use and the scope of the concept of ‘neoliberalism’. This paper identifies two common approaches to studying neoliberalism, one exploring neoliberalism as a series of policy networks, the other exploring neoliberalism as the governance of subjectivities. It is argued that to understand the urban night, we need to explore both these senses of ‘neoliberalism’. As a case study, the paper takes the ‘Alive After Five’ project, organised by the Business Improvement District in Newcastle upon Tyne, which sought to extend shopping hours in order to encourage more people to use the city at night. Drawing from actor–network theory, the planning, the translation and the practice of this new project are explored together with the on-going nature and influence of neoliberal policy on the urban night in the UK.

Night lives: Heterotopia, youth transitions and cultural infrastructure in the urban night

This paper adapts the concept of heterotopia to understand youth transitions through spaces of night-time cultural infrastructure. While youth transitions in the urban night have been well theorised, what these transitions mean for diverse cultural infrastructure provision has received less attention. Drawing on ethnography of a local punk music scene in the Australian city of Wollongong, the paper analyses how the scene was connected to one specific venue, an alternative ‘haven’ in a monopolised night-time economy. Participants revealed a trend of repetitive yet relatively fleeting association with the local scene and venue, at times a site of hedonism and celebration but also enabling grief and rites-of-passage. Temporal elements of heterotopia are developed to interpret the venue’s valued sense of ‘difference’ during active participation, but also long after association with the space. Such transitions are poorly understood, especially in planning and policy debate, influencing the way night-time cultural infrastructure is provisioned.

British women's experiences of drinking alcohol: Dynamics of emotional proximity and distance

Research on alcohol consumption suggests that friendship and peer relations are highly influential and have a decisive impact on drinking behaviours. Further, that women's friendships appear to be characterised by emotional disclosure and ‘knowing’ one another. In this paper I draw on debates around emotional intimacy, ideas of ‘closeness’ and ‘distance’ to explore how this might work when young women go out and drink alcohol. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 25 British undergraduate female students aged 18–25, this research suggests that one of the compelling appeals of alcohol is that it creates a ‘space of suspension’, whereby feelings of being both close and distant (intimate proximity) coexist, often for strategic reasons associated with security. Two themes emerged from the data: firstly that the young women had a preference for paradoxically maintaining ‘distance’ alongside ‘closeness’ with friends, and secondly, that contingencies of safety and vulnerability promoted the need for co-operation to manage risk in the night-time economy. These themes permeated relationships and became a significant dynamic in group behaviour creating a tension between functionality and friendship. This paper contributes to a growing body of work that suggests intimacy and women's friendships are complex: traditional conceptions about young women seeking intimate and close friendships need revaluating to take into consideration how ‘distance’ within groups is both desirable and negotiated, and may be facilitated through the drinking of alcohol.

What are you looking at? Visitors’ perspectives on CCTV in the night-time economy

In urban policy discourses across Western Europe, video surveillance is often considered an important tool to increase the safety of consumers in city-centre areas in general, and in nightlife districts in particular. However, the question of whether closed-circuit television (CCTV) actually promotes experiences of safety is neither straightforward nor resolved. Although this topic has received substantial attention in the academic literature, relatively little research has been conducted on how users of public spaces perceive CCTV whilst in the midst of situations. By directly confronting study participants in the presence of CCTV cameras, we explore nightlife district visitors’ perceptions and understandings of CCTV in situ, in relation to safety when out at night in Utrecht and Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Potential differences regarding gender and ethnicity are also considered. We found, first, that our study participants’ awareness of CCTV during the practice of ‘going out’ was a continuum rather than a dichotomy (aware or unaware) and that fuller awareness of CCTV is related to greater personal safety. Second, we observed a large gap between the policy discourses surrounding CCTV and the understanding of nightlife district visitors regarding how CCTV works. It is suggested that one way of aligning visitors’ understanding and policy discourses is to shift the latter from a focus on ensuring safety towards offering assistance. For the delivery of such assistance in practice, CCTV needs to be integrated further with other forms of policing and surveillance, especially those forms that are compatible with a spatiotemporal logic of embodiment and situatedness.

Interpreting Young Women’s Accounts of Drink Spiking: The Need for a Gendered Understanding of the Fear and Reality of Sexual Violence

In recent years the public discourse around drink spiking has evolved from that of an ‘epidemic’ to an ‘urban myth’. This article examines the narratives of 35 young women interviewed in relation to the contested issue of drink spiking. The suggestion that young women invoke the drink spiking discourse to provide a feminine framework for the masculine practice of binge drinking is challenged. It is argued that, on the contrary, young women’s accounts of drink spiking are characterised by uncertainty, minimisation, self-blame and a reluctance to disclose their experiences. Further, young women’s fear of drink spiking represents a contemporary extension of the conventional gendered fear of sexual violence. Hence a gendered lens, sensitive to the fear and reality of sexual violence, is a prerequisite to a nuanced interpretation of young women’s accounts of drink spiking within the sexualised environment of the night-time economy.

An (Extra)ordinary Night Out: Urban Informality, Social Sustainability and the Night-time Economy

A night out in the metropolis can offer a plethora of hedonistic experiences in urban spaces such as waterfront districts, shopping boulevards and cultural precincts. In stark contrast to this post-modern spectacle of contemporary nightlife are the mundane night-time activities that pervade the everyday spaces of ordinary people. Here, we are confronted with a tapestry of a different material culture—one that has evaded the lacklustre and homogeneous pattern of urban bars, pubs and clubs. This paper will illuminate the sociospatial dimensions of everyday (night)life in the neighbourhood of Toa Payoh Central, Singapore, and will demonstrate the resilience of urban informality in an increasingly formal and regulated global city like Singapore. It is contended that everyday (night)life has a significant role to play in the making of vibrant and liveable cities by helping to foster social sustainability in the forms of accessibility, tolerance, diversity and participation.

Making sense of urban food festivals: cultural regeneration, disorder and hospitable cities

This article examines urban food festivals, and in doing so it carries out a case study of Nottingham's food and drink festival (NFDF). It contends that such festivals need to be understood in relation to local contexts, such as the reputation for alcohol-related disorder associated with Nottingham's night-time economy. Rather than being used to attract tourism, NFDF was primarily directed at existing residents of Nottingham, where it sought to produce particular kinds of guests who would be able to invest in the city's wider regeneration. Here, the article draws on recent academic work on hospitality in demonstrating how NFDF attempted to rebrand the city centre as a more hospitable place. It concludes by showing how visitors to NFDF exhibited a sense of generosity and pride, and argues that the meaning of urban food festivals cannot, therefore, simply be reduced to the logic of neoliberal governance.

Patron offending and intoxication in night-time entertainment districts (POINTED): A study protocol

Miller, P., Pennay, A., Jenkinson, R., Droste, N., Chikritzhs, T., Tomsen, S., Wadds, P., Jones, S. C., Palmer, D., Barrie, L. & Lubman, D. I. (2013). Patron offending and intoxication in night-time entertainment districts (POINTED): A study protocol. International Journal of Alcohol and Drug Research, 2(1), 69-76. doi: 10.7895/ijadr.v2i1.74 (http://dx.doi.org/10.7895/ijadr.v2i1.74)Risky alcohol consumption is the subject of considerable community concern in Australia and internationally, particularly the risky drinking practices of young people consuming alcohol in the night-time economy. This study will determine some of the factors and correlates associated with alcohol-related risk-taking, offending and harm in and around licensed venues and night-time entertainment precincts across five Australian cities (three metropolitan and two regional). The primary aim of the study is to measure levels of pre-drinking, drinking in venues, intoxication, illicit drug use and potentially harmful drinking practices (such as mixing with energy drinks) of patrons in entertainment areas, and relating this to offending, risky behaviour and harms experienced. The study will also investigate the effects of license type, trading hours, duration of drinking episodes and geographical location on intoxication, offending, risk-taking and experience of harm. Data collection involves patron interviews (incorporating breathalysing and drug testing) with 7500 people attending licensed venues. Intensive venue observations (n=112) will also be undertaken in a range of venues, including pubs, bars and nightclubs. The information gathered through this study will inform prevention and enforcement approaches of policy makers, police and venue staff.

How should we plan and regulate live music in Australian cities? Learnings from Brisbane

Live music has been subject to particular economic and regulatory threats in recent decades. Comparative research of regimes for the planning and management of live music venues was conducted in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne over the period 2008–2010. Methods included archival and legislative reviews, field visits and interviews with key authorities, venue operators, live music campaigners and other actors. This paper gives particular attention to Brisbane's place-based approach, which replaced previous noise, planning and liquor laws to create legislated ‘Entertainment Precincts’. Operators are granted certainty for investment, with increased protection from incompatible development and noise complaints, if they are located in the designated area. In Fortitude Valley, the night-time economy has prospered, preserving and supporting a number of live music venues and giving increased protection to a set of nightclub operators. This functional separation and concentration in Brisbane differs significantly to Melbourne, with its more liberal approach and diffused venues. Brisbane is effectively placing the problems in one key site, leaving the rest of the city with few live music or night-time entertainment options. The paper explores these outcomes and provides options for cities seeking to preserve live music and create accessibility to the night-time economy, but retain amenity for residents.

Inhabiting the contradictions: Hypersexual femininity and the culture of intoxication among young women in the UK

This paper contributes to debates on post-feminism and the constitution of contemporary femininity via an exploration of young women’s alcohol consumption and their involvement in normative drinking cultures. We view femininity as a profoundly contradictory and dilemmatic space which appears almost impossible for girls or young women to inhabit. The juxtaposition of hyper-sexual femininity and the culture of intoxication produces a particularly difficult set of dilemmas for young women. They are exhorted to be sassy and independent – but not feminist; to be ‘up for it’ and to drink and get drunk alongside young men – but not to ‘drink like men’. They are also called on to look and act as agentically sexy within a pornified night-time economy, but to distance themselves from the troubling figure of the ‘drunken slut’. Referring to recent research on young women’s alcohol consumption and our own study on young adults’ involvement in the culture of intoxication in the UK, we consider the ways in which young women manage to inhabit this terrain, and the implications for contemporary feminism and safer drinking initiatives .