Youth Cultures, Identities and the Consumption of Night-life City Spaces

School of Geography, University of Leeds

Principal Investigators:

Dr Paul Chatterton
Dr Robert Hollands

Dates:

March 2000 - April 2002

Grant:

ESRC (£123,808) (Grant Number R000238288)

Summary:

Even a casual observer could not fail to notice a ritual decent of young adults onto city centre streets in Britain every Friday and Saturday night. For example, City Councils and Universities have increasingly made reference to the quality of night-life as an attraction to students, business, and tourism. Numerous commentators have also remarked on the role young people are playing in the revival of Britain’s city-centre spaces. Yet despite a long history of writing on youth, its relationship with city spaces, consumption, and identity, has remained relatively unexplored. This research project seeks to provide a theoretically informed social and spatial analysis of the production, regulation, and consumption of night-life spaces in three English cities (Newcastle, Leeds, and Bristol). The research involved in-depth participant observation study of sub-groups of young people and interviews with the key institutional actors in the night-time economy such as police, local authorities, corporate players and licensing officials.

Publications:

• Hollands, R. and Chatterton, P. (2002) ‘Changing times for an old industrial city. Hard times, hedonism and corporate power in Newcastle's nightlife’ City 6(3), 291–317.
• Chatterton, P. and Hollands, R. (2003) Urban Nightscapes: Youth Cultures, Pleasure Spaces and Corporate Power London, Routledge.
• Hollands, R. and Chatterton, P. (2003) ‘Producing Nightlife in the New Urban Entertainment Economy: Corporatization, Branding and Market Segmentation’ International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 27(2), 361–385.