Exploring Nightlife: Space, Society and Governance (Jordi Nofre and Adam Eldridge, eds)

Abstract

Exploring Nightlife is a fascinating and insightful volume exploring often overlooked issues related to the "night" and those who inhabit it. The concepts of nightlife, night time, and urban nightscapes are closely scrutinised by the diverse authors in this collection. Nightlife for the purposes of this review is conceived as both the actual physical sites for the consumption of intoxicating substances and experiences, and as the location of such sites within city nightscapes. Therefore, nightlife, as the authors in this book highlight, refers to more than physical venues. It is a more fluid concept that can also refer literally to life at night: how the urban landscape is transformed after dark, and how the city at night is consumed by its often-diverse populations. As the editors note in their introduction to the book, nightlife is not new, but the regeneration and gentrification of urban areas is a phenomenon that has taken on increased significance in the post-industrial era of neo-liberalism. Such regeneration often has a relationship with nightlife, either by altering, sometimes radically, existing ebbs and flows of urban nightscapes or through the introduction and development of new nightlife areas and venues. The idea that this type of intervention and regeneration in inner city locations and other areas perceived as run down, risky and dangerous will "save" the area and its inhabitants while providing economic stimulation and profits is one that is critically interrogated in this volume. A variety of topics such as: harm reduction; power and resistance in city nightscapes throughout processes of gentrification and regeneration; resistance to regeneration as a form of social control; and the displacement of existing nightlife traditions, are explored by the authors in this volume providing a critical and nuanced discussion of some of the key themes related to nightlife and the city after dark.