Edited by Jordi Nofre and Adam Eldridge (and including collaborations of many members from LXNIGHTS) the new book on urban night Exploring Nightlife: Space, Society and Governance will be published by Rowman and Littlefield International this May 2018.
Description: While the night has long been associated with crime and fear, over recent decades ‘nightlife’ has become increasingly associated with the creative economy, tourism, sociability, job growth, and urban regeneration. Debates about anti-social behaviour, morality, and safety continue to shape our understanding of the night but newer concerns have also emerged about gentrification, economic and social exclusion, commercialisation, and over-development. Exploring Nightlife: Space, Society and Governance is the first edited volume that critically examines nightlife from a cross-disciplinary and international perspective. Comprising original contemporary research, the collection brings together case studies from across the globe that explore topics including nightlife and urban development, race, gender and youth culture, alcohol and drug use, and urban renewal. In doing so, each chapter explores nightlife in relation to local and global structures of power and governance. Exploring Nightlife is an ideal introduction to the emerging field of night-time studies and will be a valuable resource for students and researchers with an interest in geography, cultural studies, sociology, youth, leisure, and urban studies.
Table of Contents:
Introduction, Jordi Nofre and Adam Eldridge
Part I: Nightlife and Urban Change in the Neo-liberal City
1. Nightlife and urban change in Southern European cities: The case of Montpellier and Lisbon, Emanuele Giordano, João Carlos Martins, Dominique Crozat and Iñigo Sánchez-Fuarros
2. ‘Civilising’ by gentrifying: The contradictions of neoliberal planning for nightlife in Sydney, Peta Wolifson
3. Night-time economy and urban development in post-socialist Sarajevo, Jordi Martín-Díaz, Nihad Čengić and Jordi Nofre
4. The night in Maboneng (Johannesburg, South Africa): An urban frontier in-between securization, commodification and contestation, Chrystel Olouko
5. Kerameikos – Metaxourgio: Entertaining ourselves in Athens’ “ghettoes of the mind”, Penny Koutrolikou
Part II: Power, Culture and Identity
6. Cairo Nights: Mulids and the politics of Mahraganat music, José Sánchez-García
7. Consumption patterns of Erasmus students in Lisbon: Circulating between mainstream and alternative nightscapes, Daniel Malet-Calvo
8. Young People, Alcohol and Suburban Nightscapes in Manchester, Samantha Wilkinson
9. ‘I’m too old for that now’: The importance of life course in student nightlife normativities in Flanders, Valerie De Craene
10. Reviewing night-time economy policies through a gendered lens: gender aware or gender neutral?, Marion Roberts/ Part III: Law, Control and Governance of the Urban Night
11. Red Light Districts of Amsterdam, Irina Van Aalst and Ilse Van Liempt
12. Nightlife as an educational setting: the harm reduction perspective in Portugal, Helena Valente and Cristiana Pires
13. Policies for nightlife and the democratic city: from urban renewal to behaviour control in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Marcos Paulo Ferreira De Góis
Epilogue, Will Straw

The former harbour quarter of Cais do Sodré in central Lisbon has been recently transformed into the most crowded nightlife spot in the city, causing some negative social and spatial impacts such as the worsening of community liveability during night-time hours. In addition, the inefficacy of the latest community intervention project conducted in the area (SAFE!N) has been largely due to the liminal governance of the urban night applied in the area. In the final remarks, some actions are suggested to foster long-term sustainable coexistence between the right to the city and the right to leisure in the area.
The International Conference: The City: Images and Imaginaries, will be celebrated in School of Humanities, Communication and Library Science, University Carlos III De Madrid (Getafe), on March 12th -15th, 2018. During the conference the following public activities will take place:


Over the last three decades culture has played a central role in the urban renewal of many cities worldwide. The inner city has thus become a socially, politically controlled “theatre of consumption” (Ritzer 2010). Correspondingly, the urban night has emerged not only as a significant space–time of productive economic activity but also as a key strategy in the urban regeneration of downtowns (Chatterton and Hollands 2003; Farrer 2008, 2011; Hae 2011, 2012; Tadie and Permanadeli 2015; among others). In some Southern European cities the rise of new urban nightscapes in their historical neighborhoods (Crivello 2009; García-Perez 2014; Nofre 2013) is largely connected to urban, social, and economic impacts caused by the neoliberalization of the city (Brenner and Theodore 2005). This is the case of Bairro Alto in Lisbon (Portugal), where the university student and tourist nightlife in this historical neighborhood of the Portuguese capital may be seen as part of a broader public and private-led strategy of internationalization of the city as advertised on the website of the Lisbon Tourism Promotion Agency: “Lisbon’s nightlife is known as one of the longest and most vibrant in the whole of Europe and the world.” Indeed, over the past 10 years, the exponential growth of international tourists visiting Lisbon and the increasing attractiveness of the Portuguese capital for hosting national and international university students have caused some social, spatial, economic and cultural impacts in the inner city (Galhardo 2014; Malheiros et al., 2012; Mendes 2006, 2011, 2014; Nofre 2013; Rodrigues 2010). But how is student and tourism-related nightlife contributing to the urban change in Bairro Alto?
João Carlos Martins will present first scientific results of the community-based intervention project SAFE!N, with a presentation entitled “Social, Public Health and Urban Governance Impacts: On Safe!N Project Implementation”
“The growing presence of international students in the city of Lisbon attracted my attention ten years ago, when I started my PhD on the occupation by different social groups of the most emblematic central square in Lisbon: Praça do Rossio. As a foreigner, I shared several apartments with international students, at a time when the city of Lisbon was not renowned as a tourist or student destination. I got to know a group of exchange students that had developed a particular alternative lifestyle in the patio where they lived. They organized several meals outside and installed improvised benches to spend time in the patio, as well as sharing a communitarian style of living with their Portuguese neighbours. Next year, when the students left, the next-door Hostel bought those apartments and converted them into suites for tourists. Replicating the students, they installed permanent benches and even imitated their new-age tastes in the decoration. In other words, the hostel reproduced the students’ creative ways, making products for tourists. When I started to study Erasmus students back in 2013, I borrowed the term ‘studentification’ to assess the significance and impact of those populations in Lisbon. However, as an anthropologist, it was unsettling for me to isolate the housing question from the wide variety of practices and relations that students established within Lisbon’s urban processes”.
For those researching in Lisbon the situation expounded by Jorge Sequera could be comparable with Mercado da Ribeira, where the powerful presence of the ‘Time Out Gourmet Market’ has created a situation of marginalization for several traditional activities in and around the market.