The '24 hour city' – condition critical?
Although many '24-hour city' strategies have been economically successful, they have often failed to meet the social needs and aspirations of local communities. Phil Hadfield, Stuart Lister, Dick Hobbs and Simon Winlow look at the problems now facing these night-time economies and examine some of the latest proposals for addressing them.
This text, we found on the homepage of `Institute of Alcohol Studies-United Kingdom´, is about London, but there are many statement which are also reality in malmö. The town-nightlife in öresundregion we´ve investigated.
The following interesting statements we’ve picked out:
While the prophets of 'cultural regeneration' foresaw post-modern 'playgrounds', the market forces unleashed by the deregulation of alcohol-based night-time leisure have contributed to the creation of scenes more akin to the pre-modern battleground.
However, the subsequent strategies of deregulation which have permitted the growth of a market-led monoculture of licensed premises and fast-food outlets are a corruption of Jacob's vision. Alcohol-based leisure now dominates the nightlife of our urban centres, and its expansion has become the gauge of post-industrial prosperity, yet Jacobs specifically warned against what she called this 'duplication of the most profitable use'.
Jane Jacobs's famous arguments regarding the social and economic benefits of the populous after-dark street have been important theoretical cornerstones of the '24-hour city' concept, and also of official crime prevention policy guidance.3
The Death and Life of Great American Cities is Jane Jacobs single most influential book, and quite possibly the most influential American book on urban planning. Widely read by both planning professionals and the general public, the book is a strong critique of the urban renewal policies of the 1950s which, she claimed, destroyed communities and created isolated, unnatural urban spaces. Jacobs advocated dense, mixed-use neighborhoods and frequently cited
New York City's
Greenwich Village as an example of a vibrant urban community.
Young drinkers now 'own' many town and city centres at night. When such ownership is established, these areas become even more attractive to young people seeking a permissive leisure environment free from the supervision or censure of the older citizens with whom they share these spaces at other times.5
This 'honey-pot' effect produces social environments in which aggressive hedonism and disorder become the norm, creating nuisance and noise pollution for residents and generating fear, avoidance behaviour, and a loss of amenity for the majority of citizens and potential visitors.
The police are constantly juggling resources in an attempt to cope with the situation on the streets, and control duties within licensed premises continue to be performed by ineffectively regulated teams of bouncers. Yet since such central leisure zones now attract unprecedented numbers of young consumers they have become highly attractive locations for licensed trade investment.
· The current path of night-time leisure development is also having adverse effects upon residential amenity. In addition to crime and disorder and the fear of crime, residents may face an almost intolerable range of problems, including late-night noise, vandalism of property, litter, and the fowling of pavements and doorsteps
· These unpleasant experiences sit uneasily with the vision of 'urban renaissance' contained in the recent Urban White Paper, which seeks to encourage people to remain in, and return to, a 'compact' central core. As the deregulation of alcohol licensing continues, there is now an urgent need to reconcile these competing interests.
· If the '24-hour city' vision of a high-density, mixed-use urban core featuring both a varied and economically prosperous nightlife and excellent residential amenities is ever to become a reality, a much more integrated and interventionist approach to municipal regulation will need to be adopted.
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