Urban safety, anti-social behaviour and the night-time economy

The contemporary city is a contested space and its governance is the subject of complex global economic forces, local interests and political struggles as well as a response to the changing face of governing alliances in residential and commercial areas, forms of consumption, commercially-generated crime and disorder and cultural expressions of leisure. This article seeks to provide a thematic introduction to the manner in which the regulation of contemporary British cities has been influenced by concerns with tackling anti-social behaviour and promoting civility. It argues that in governing urban safety, the normative governmental agendas that seek to remoralize and cleanse city spaces and promote certain values of appropriate consumer-citizen, often clash with commercially-driven imperatives to (excessive) consumption and the allure of cities, for some, as places of difference that exhibit relaxed normative constraints; most notably in the night-time economy. It argues that the manner in which these forces are played out is conditioned by the interplay between different actors and organizations, as both regulators and regulated, some of whom have assumed new responsibilities in the governance of urban safety. The resultant pressures have produced mixed experiences of the city as a meeting place for loosely connected strangers, as a place of indulgence and as a place of cultural expression.