ABSTRACT
Place after dark is often conceived in binary opposition to how it is encountered and understood in the daytime, which does not account for the variations and qualities of darkness and light that may occur. Through the ongoing developments of artificial illumination, urban spaces have typically been wrought with infrastructures, policies, and practices to control and manage the night-time in cities. This has primarily been achieved through strategies to limit, if not banish, darkness. Future cities, meanwhile, are projected through visions of coherence, cleanliness, efficiency, and light, offering little account for place after dark. This chapter examines the potential of urban peripheries as sites for experimentation and imagination toward new conceptualisations of what a city is and what it could be. It draws on experiences of the edgelands of Manchester, UK, to illustrate different coexistences between darkness and light, and to reconsider how we might design for place after dark.
