Irina van Aalst

From Museum to Mass Entertainment The Evolution of the Role of Museums in Cities

In a relatively short period of time, the museum cluster has become a key element of the tourism sector and an important contributor to the urban economy. In their competition to attract visitors, residents, and businesses, more and more cities are profiling themselves as a Cultural City, an Entertainment City, or a Fantasy City. Meanwhile, museums have evolved from buildings devoted primarily to educational and cultural presentations into public spaces where the visitor reigns. This article examines the increased attention that cities are giving to investments in museum facilities and to the development of spatial concentrations of museums, known as museum clusters. Two case-studies - Amsterdam’s Museumplein and Berlin’s Museuminsel - are used as a backdrop for the description, illustration, and analysis of recent trends.

CREATIVE CLUSTERS IN BERLIN: ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND THE QUALITY OF PLACE IN PRENZLAUER BERG AND KREUZBERG

Abstract. Urban creative clusters are currently a major focus of attention, as their prominent position in both local political and academic circles makes evident. Many authors stress the importance of spatial concentration for creative industries. However, only a few studies have focused on the individual entrepreneur. As a result, empirical evidence of the meaning of urban place as a site for social networks and a space for inspiration is still scarce. This is of some consequence as entrepreneurs provide a crucial link between creative activities and economic change and development. This study contributes to the existing literature by investigating how different creative entrepreneurs choose and evaluate their location. Using qualitative interviews with entrepreneurs in two creative clusters in the Berlin neighbourhoods Prenzlauer Berg and Kreuzberg, this article shows the significance of the look and feel of specific places and explains how and for whom local networks are important.

Fear and Fantasy in the Public Domain: The Development of Secured and Themed Urban Space

Current projects to upgrade public spaces in Western cities seek to produce secured space by improving safety and decrease feelings of fear, and to produce themed space by promoting urban entertainment or fantasy. This study examines how ‘fear’ and ‘fantasy’ influence urban design and management of two public spaces in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. It traces social antecedents for the development of secured and themed public space, such as a growing differentiation of urban lifestyles, and proposes a new technique for analysing public spaces. The case studies differ in design and management: one is secured, the other themed. However, each secured space contains an element of ‘fantasy’, and each themed space an element of ‘fear’.

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.

Introduction: Geographies of the urban night

Academic research tends to overlook what happens when night falls. This special issue aims to bring the space–time of the urban night to the fore by asking how nocturnal cities are produced, used, experienced and regulated in different geographical contexts. Despite local variations and specificities important similarities and ongoing transformations are identified regarding the long-term trends in the formation of the space–times of the urban night. We have structured this special issue on the basis of four important focal points of research for studying the night: (1) changing meanings and experiences of urban darkness and nights; (2) the evolution of the night-time economy; (3) the intensification of regulation; and (4) dynamics in practices of going out. By bringing different sets of literature and theoretical perspectives together this special issue provides a relational perspective on the urban night.

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.

Parallel Lives on the Plaza Young Dutch Women of Turkish and Moroccan Descent and Their Feelings of Comfort and Control on Rotterdam’s Schouwburgplein

In the last two decades, many city center plazas in the Netherlands have been redeveloped to become more attractive “meeting spaces” and not merely profitable “market places.” This article analyzes the use and experience of Schouwburgplein, an urban plaza in Rotterdam, as meeting space by young Dutch women of Turkish and Moroccan descent. Our analysis reveals a paradoxical interplay between “social comfort” and “social control” in public space. To feel comfortable, the young women avoid interaction with non-befriended young men of immigrant descent and use the plaza in company of friends and family, mostly young females of immigrant descent. However, being among known and unknown youth of Turkish and Moroccan descent on the plaza also implies subjecting oneself to uncomfortable social control. Moreover, the young women of Turkish and Moroccan descent seem occupied with being part of what they consider “their” youth group and some even reveal indifference toward “others” on Schouwburgplein—resulting in “parallel lives” on the plaza.