Deindustrialization
The Night-Time Economy is an increasingly important subject of interest to researchers. Throughout history, towns and cities have had some manifestation of an “economy” that operates in the evening and at night. So, people traded objects and services beyond the end of the commonly understood “working day”. In Asia, night markets selling domestic goods, medicines, and food have existed for thousands of years. Anyway, in the 21st-century leisure or “post-industrial” age, the transactional nature of the evening and night has appeared to grow in importance to the functioning of towns and cities. So while perhaps not the same content of economic contribution as an activity during the day- time, what happens “after dark” has become much more significant and possibly visible for a range of reasons which we set out below. This is particularly true in Western and Western-influenced nations, where some have had a problematic relationship with the “night,” instinctively seen as something to be feared, avoided and regulated. The conceptualization and research into the “night-time economy,” as it quickly became known, appeared in the early 1990s when a small number of cultural and urban theorists identified that European town and city centres, after dark, had their unique qualities. While these qualities did not entirely separate them from the “day-time,” it was clear they produced specific distinct sociological phenomenon and raised issues different to those that drove urban governance and city management during the day. These early studies focused on the liberating, consumer-oriented and urban planning aspects of the Night-Time Economy.
However, since the late 1990s, and partly in reaction to the pro-NTE-liberalisation agenda influenced by these early studies, there has been a considerable inquiry into the NTE by academics from sociological, criminological and health backgrounds, often focusing on the costs, negative externalities or ‘negative impacts associated with activity after dark. The Night-Time Economy (NTE) is an increasingly important subject of interest to researchers, policymakers, private business and public agencies, as well as the media and the wider community. Throughout history, towns and cities have had some manifestation of an “economy” that operates in the evening and at night. In Ancient Greece (and probably before) people traded objects and services beyond the end of the commonly understood “working day.” In Asia, night markets selling domestic goods, medicines, and food have existed for thousands of years. Anyway, in the 21st-century leisure or ‘post-industrial’ age, the transactional nature of the evening and night has appeared to grow in importance to the functioning of towns and cities. So while perhaps not the same content of economic contribution as an activity during the day-time, what happens “after dark” has become much more significant and possibly visible for a range of reasons which we set out below. This is particularly true in Western and Western-influenced nations, where some have had a problematic relationship with the “night” instinctively seen as something to be feared, avoided and regulated.
The first conceptualization and research into the “night-time economy,” as it quickly became known, appeared in the early 1990s when a small number of cultural and urban theorists identified that European town and city centres, after dark, had their unique qualities. While these qualities did not entirely separate them from the “day-time” it was clear they produced specific distinct sociological phenomenon and raised issues different to those that drove urban governance and city management during the day. These early studies focused on the liberating, consumer-oriented and urban planning aspects of the NTE. Anyway, since the late 1990s, and partly in reaction to the pro — NTE — liberalization agenda influenced by these early studies, there has been a considerable inquiry into the NTE by academics from sociological, criminological and health backgrounds, often focusing on the costs, negative externalities or ‘negative impacts associated with activity after dark. The 1980s saw the re-emergence of a concern with city centres as focal points for, and as symbolic of, a specifically urban way of life seemingly eroded in the 1970s. Although questions of social justice and local democracy remained, these new concerns pushed cultural items to the fore. The context of this shift was complicated, but we can pick out what we would consider being the main features.
The first aspect is the deindustrialization of older industrial areas which left large portions of more senior city centres derelict with the consequent shattering of local and regional identity brought on by this economic crisis and which this dereliction powerfully symbolized.
Whole cities and regions which had grown up around an industrial production rooted in place and central to the formation of the working and living patterns of the local population now found themselves radically undermined. This was to do not only with the devastating effects of long-term structural unemployment but with a broader sense of loss of purpose; of identity. In the industrial cities of Northern England, Scotland, Northern France, the Ruhr, The Nether- lands, a collective identity crisis could be perceived in the early 1980s. Ugly grim cities they may have been, but formerly they produced, they made for the world. Now they were just ugly and fierce.
The second aspect is the revalorization of city centre sites in the development boom, which began in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Hanging on in many cities in the mid-1970s, the central business districts (CBDs) represented a fixed capital that companies were extremely reluctant to write off. This was not just in terms of buildings but also of the land.
The rise of footloose capital in the context of 1970s restructuring meant that investment capital was available to recoup the ‘true’ value of the CBD. Crucial to this strategy was a reinvention or re-emphasis on the prestige of centrality. New city centre offices, as well as residential and leisure developments, emphasized this centrality through the promotion of the unique value of urbanity signs and images of urban living that had atrophied in the 1960s and 1970s or had acquired purely negative connotations. This revalorization was not just aimed at the CBD. In the new regeneration models of the North American developers, those areas adjacent to the CBD were more than a bonus windfall, they were central to the regeneration package. Not just the real estate value but also the cultural capital represented by downtowns’ were to be recouped by the developers recreating them as sites of a “new urbanity” centred around leisure, up-market consumption, and prestigious residential living intended to signal this “new urbanity” through echoes of the “new bohemianism” of 1970s pioneer gentrification.
The third aspect is the emergence of city-to-city competitiveness at a national and supranational level, where the management of the local image was deemed to be crucial in an increasingly globalized marketplace.
This image was tied to the cultural facilities and “vibrancy” of the city centre. If deindustrialization was about the abstraction of production from a place, and if the “post-industrial” economies were about footloose service sector workers, then cities with a lousy image would lose out. Unfortunately, the problem was that city authorities often had little knowledge of the cultural sector, which was moved from a peripheral to a central place in local policymaking in ways that often involved crass and heavy-handed opportunism. This caused tension within the cultural sector, as those working within the artistic field were faced with a whole new set of external demands and indices of success. It also caused tensions within the local area as “high culture” was given precedence in funding programs. Also, it created tensions within the local polity as planners trained to deal with the city as a system of objective factors were faced with notions of urban cultures and spaces that few were equipped to deal with.
The fourth aspect was the reorganization of city centres around consumption rather than production. If planners were faced with a new emphasis on urban culture and space, demanding approaches to regulation, the more immediate and powerful pressures for a retreat from principle stemmed from the market often backed up with political expediency. In the 1980s the revalorized city centre emerged as a new landscape of buildings, enterprises and signs concerned with the organization and exploitation of consumption. This economy of consumption (distribution and marketing), unlike the economy of the production and exchange of goods (manufacturing and trade), had a much looser relationship to the local area. The big players in this new consumer economy were global. In their establishment, at the heart of the modern city centre, they radically redrew the boundaries of local and international in the city. It was not just that all city centres began to look the same but that the relation to place, to the local involvement in this globalized consumption, was made increasingly tenuous.
References
Harvey, D. (1989). The urban experience. JHU Press.
Hall, (1988), The city of theory. The city reader pages 391–393
Zukin, S. (1989). Loft living: Culture and capital in urban change. Rutgers University; Press.;
Lloyd, R. (2010). Neo-bohemia: Art and commerce in the post-industrial city. Routledge.;
Bourdieu, P. et al. (1984), A social critique of the judgement of taste. Traducido del francespor R. Nice. Londres, Routledge.
