Introduction

Back in 1995, Franco Bianchini spoke of the ‘relative underdevelopment of urban night-life in Britain’ compared to other European cities (1995: 123). According to Bianchini, the development of night-life culture was inhibited by the monofunctional British town centres dominated by shops, offi ces and physical structures not particularly conducive to walking the city; by poor public transport provision at night; by the temporal constraints of the licensing hours and a leisure lifestyle that was predominantly home-based (ibid.). More than a decade later the landscape of night life in many British town and city centres hardly matches this dire picture of the past.