ABSTRACT
As earlier studies argued (Chatterton and Hollands 2003; Hobbs, Hadfi eld, Lister, Winlow, and Waddington 2003), the rise of nightclubbing culture can be seen as one manifestation of the growing importance of cultural and experience economies for urban development in post-industrial settings (Scott 2000). Since the late 1970s urban regeneration strategies sought to redevelop de-industrialized and often impoverished urban centres and to reinvigorate urbanity through residential living, consumption and leisure facilities (Lovatt and O’Connor 1995) or through centres of cultural production and consumption (a more recent example is the Tilburg Pop Cluster in the Netherlands). To some extent, these strategies also implicitly or explicitly incorporated nightlife entertainment; especially in Italy (Rome), Denmark (Copenhagen), Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany and France such policies had been probed in the late 1970s and 1980s in response to the demand of the increasing student population and new urban social movements (e.g. gay and black activism or ‘Reclaim the Night’ in the Women’s Movement; Bianchini 1995: 122).
