ancient cities

went on, improving the urban fabric to make it
less hospitable for them—often opening up alleys
and courtyards to let in air as well as light—and
above all, by careful surveillance by the police and
others, aided by well-lit streets.
This concern for the apparent lawlessness and
immorality of the city at night was compounded by
the sense, from the 1840s onward, that if the night
was to be given to leisure, then it should be of the
right sort: improving, sober, and pious. The rational
recreation movement studied by Peter Bailey
and others was particularly concerned with providing
alternatives to pubs and bars like coffeehouses,
parks, museums, and libraries. Even better, the
streets were to be abandoned for the comforts of
home, once the working day was done.
Contemporary Issues
Many of these characteristics of nightlife are still
with us today. The night is still associated with
pleasure and fear, despite more certain and better
distributed lighting in many cities. In the eyes of
some observers, the contemporary nighttime economy
is stronger than it was in the nineteenth century,
remaking declining industrial and waterside
areas, commercial centers left empty at the end of
the working day, and inner residential areas abandoned
by middle-class whites in the middle of the
twentieth century. Describing these revitalized centers
as “fantasy cities,” John Hannigan notes that
in the United States they are characterized by
branding and sponsorship, the use of themes in
design (heritage or popular cultural themes, like
Disney), a commitment to nightlife, and isolation
from neighboring parts of the city, among other
things. Like other commentators, Hannigan is worried
by the extent to which this nightlife promotes
a fake liminality or “riskless risk” that seems dangerous
but is thoroughly standardized and sanitized.
From this viewpoint, the fantasy city is a
form of gentrification for nonresidential areas.
Paul Chatterton and Robert Hollands have identified
similar characteristics in the United Kingdom’s
urban nightlife, against the context of the domination
of brewing and retail by a small number of
large companies and a state that seems happy with
a neoliberal combination of liberalization and
control (the 2003 Licensing Act relaxed the rigidity
of the existing licensing hours, while other strategic
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policies sought to punish rowdy drinkers and
minimize the consequences of alcohol). However,
there is more to the nighttime economy than a partnership
between capital and state, and these developments
are sometimes unpredictable.
It was property speculation, not morality campaigns,
that closed down London’s Cremorne
Gardens in 1878, and contemporary fantasy cities
can also be threatened by residential development.
Westminster City Council—responsible for a large
proportion of London’s entertainment venues and
the largest licensing authority in Britain—is becoming
increasingly sensitive to complaints of noise
and nuisance from local residents, particularly
those who have to work the next day. In Bristol,
residents’ associations successfully challenged
licensing policies, and this is expected to become
more widespread and successful under the 2003
act. In Barcelona, Dublin, Ibitha, and Thailand
residents and revelers have come into conflict.
Cases like these suggest that cities are complex
organisms and that it is risky to assume that there is
only one form of nightlife. Geographical and historical
differences matter, as do definitions of sociability
and sociality. In the first case, it seems unwise to
reduce nightlife to a simple alliance between neoliberal
policies and the nighttime economy. It is certainly
not the case that the fantasy city has been rolled out
from the United States; other countries possess different
urban forms and cultures, different economies,
and different ways of enjoying the night.
Second, there are specific histories of nightlife to
match this geographical variation. In Britain, for
example, the revival of the nighttime economy and
rise in going out over the last 20 years has to be
put against the century-long decline in alcohol
consumption that preceded it. In Spain and France,
however, current concerns revolve around the
decline of wine consumption and the rise of beer
drinking because this drinking without eating
seems to be becoming more central to nighttime
entertainment; attempts are being made to revive
older forms of café sociability that do not revolve
around alcohol in Madrid.
Third, our evaluation of a city’s nightlife reflects
our ideas about urban life in general. If we are
interested in revanchism and the rights to the city,
then we will see this in our analysis of nightlife. If
we see urban sociability as something produced in
everyday encounters between strangers and the