As lights come on in the streets and darkness descends on cities, most ‘call it a day’. The night is rarely a popular issue for news headlines, local governments or urban researchers. Yet what in our cities happens afterhours, and how city leaders manage it, is far from inconsequential. Managing Cities at Night intervenes in this landscape with an accessible, evidence-based and internationally minded volume capable of inspiring a greater appreciation of the night-time economy in research and practice. It offers a useful guide to urban governance after hours with a unique stock-take of this rea ... More

As lights come on in the streets and darkness descends on cities, most ‘call it a day’. The night is rarely a popular issue for news headlines, local governments or urban researchers. Yet what in our cities happens afterhours, and how city leaders manage it, is far from inconsequential. Managing Cities at Night intervenes in this landscape with an accessible, evidence-based and internationally minded volume capable of inspiring a greater appreciation of the night-time economy in research and practice. It offers a useful guide to urban governance after hours with a unique stock-take of this reality with an eye at questions of urban equality, not least by taking into account the momentous impact of COVID-19 on night-time activity. The book presents an updated review of night-time governance across five continents, with insights from realities as different as London, New York, Valparaiso, Sydney, Tokyo, Berlin, Bogota and Melbourne. It does so to explicitly broaden the imagination of what it means to manage cities ‘after hours’, as an explicitly ‘scholarly’ guide for practitioners and novices of the night-time economy. It presents a distinctive focus on night governance, the role of night mayors and night commissions, and does so in an informative case-based way that sketches one of the widest variety of vignettes and case studies currently available on night-time economies of cities the world over.