Philip Hadfield

Violent Hypocrisy Governance and the Night-time Economy

The development of alcohol-based night-time economies as part of government-sponsored post-industrial urban regeneration involves two interconnected political and economic processes. The first is the shift to a consumer economy, and the second is the movement within local governance from the provision of services towards a focus upon nurturing economic growth. The violence and disorder that have resulted from the huge expansion in these night-time economies have produced a crisis for state policing that has led, via licensing, to the expansion of commercially relevant control strategies. This paper, based upon extensive empirical research, discusses the hypocrisy that is inherent in the governance of liminal licence.

The night-time city. Four modes of exclusion: Reflections on the Urban Studies special collection

This article presents commentary and analysis on the Urban Studies special collection on the night-time city. The collection highlights burgeoning interest in the urban night from across the social sciences and helps consolidate what might be referred to as the ‘third wave’ of research on the evening and night-time economy (ENTE). The collection addresses the challenges of 21st century place-making after dark in a variety of international contexts. This commentary interprets individual contributions to this collection in the light of the author’s research experience within an evolving and increasingly sophisticated field of knowledge. The articles have, I suggest, power relations, social exclusion and social sustainability as their most prominent meta-themes. I propose a new conceptual model for the interpretation of situated assemblages of power, capacity and influence, as operating across four overlapping modes of urban governance.