Meeting afterhours: on the work that night commissions do

ABSTRACT

Despite the sizeable impacts of COVID-19 lockdowns on nightlife, the night-time economy (NTE) is still high on the cards in cities. Whilst much attention has focused on leadership figures of the NTE like "night mayors", there is a vast landscape of institutionalized forms of night-time governance requiring greater recognition. Consultative night-time governance systems offer particular opportunities for advancing research and practice. We develop a typology of these systems discussing comparatively the role that night “councils”, “commissions”, “boards” and “panels” play in eighteen case studies. We deploy our typology to unpack the form and function of these systems, and the urban governance challenges the NTE encountered during COVID-19. We call for more empirical work on urban governance afterhours to better attend to the ways NTE conversations are convened in cities, and highlight the role these systems play in giving voice to those who take part in the NTE.

KEYWORDS:

• Night-time governance
• night-time economy
• night council
• night mayors
• urban governance
• right to the night

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the engagement on this conversation on night time governance by the graduates of the Studio N program at the Melbourne School of Design at the University of Melbourne. A particular thanks to Will Straw for the kind input on this paper specifically, and Enora Robin and Jenny McArthur more for input in the framing of night commissions. An early version of this approach was published with them in Managing Cities at Night (Acuto et al., 2021), and in open access in the report Night Time Economy Commissions: a review of international case studies (https://doi.org/10.26188/22067012).

Disclosure statement

Michele Acuto is a current member of the City of Melbourne Night-time Economy Advisory Committee. Anna Edwards is Director at Ingenium Research Pty Ltd, providing advice to the Australian case studies presented here.

Notes

1 It should be noted that the nomenclature for these four categories does not always align with the naming conventions of the committees themselves. For example, Aberdeen’s Night-Time Commission is classified as both a Council and a Panel under our typology, rather than a Commission.

2 A digest of the deep impact of COVID-19 on the NTE is available through the Global Nighttime Recovery Plan collaborative project convened by a mix of practitioners, scholars, and policymakers to discuss this very issue. See https://www.nighttime.org/recoveryplan/.

3 Greater Manchester Combined Authority, “New service to help provide support to Greater Manchester’s night time economy”, 24 February 2021, at: https://www.greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk/news/new-service-to-help-provide-support-to-greater-manchester-s-night-time-economy/.

4 An NTE destination accreditation scheme, https://www.atcm.org/purple-flag.

Additional information

Funding

Research behind the essay was funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project “Night Shift” [DP220101078], as well as by the Studio N program at the Melbourne Centre for Cities, University of Melbourne.