ABSTRACT
This chapter explores role and meaning of the cabaret law and other governmental regulations on dance clubs in New York City, in relation to the drastic transformation of urban space. This research is situated within a body of literature on the political economy and the social relations of neoliberal urbanism and on the emergence of punitive urbanism under neoliberal urbanism. Urban landscape is installed with post-industrial symbols - such as upscale condos, corporate offices, chic shopping centres, and leisure complexes full of corporate commercial businesses, museums, art galleries, sports events, cultural festivals and so forth. The historical geography of dance clubs in New York City from the 1980s onwards demonstrates how laws, regulations and institutions have been at the centre of creative destruction of urban space, economy and culture in the city. By the mid-1980s, the media pronounced that 'the party seems to be over for Lower Manhattan clubs'.
