Call for Participation
LAB’URBA – LAVUE - PRODIG
Workshop - 05-06 March 2015
Urban night-life.
To think, smell and tell night-life
1) Rationale:
The quality of nightlife in European cities has become a real political challenge in recent years. The turning point in the decision of regulating urban temporalities was The General States of the Night in Paris (2010) and in Geneva (2011). New lifestyles, the desynchronisation of social time with individual rhythms, the disruption of traditional couple work / leisure in self-realization and competitiveness between governors about urban marketing, explain this new point of view about urban life.
Thus, the linear breakdown of activities (work, leisure, sleep) and its articulation within the life cycle (childhood, working life and retirement), has been overturned. These mutations lead to an expansion of mobility and a diversification of time and space practices, resulting in new expectations from "night-owls" (in terms of equipment and services, animation, security...) and specific forms of tension and/or solidarity linked to the occupation of public space.
Time planning has emerged as a way to reconcile the diversity of uses and align collective urban rhythms. How do the luminous material and the implementation of urban festive events create urban environments? How could night-life be intensified? How are uses controlled by lifestyles planning? Nevertheless, the user and/or occupant of urban night-life seems excluded from political decision-making. Such, societal conflicts perpetuate. Make planning urban nights a non-self-evident process.
Nowadays, how is nocturnal urban space occupied in central areas of large cities, but also in fringes? What does this gradual conquest of urban night-life mean? How do we speak of everyday acceptanceand massive expansion in access to these nights? How can nightlife be appeased? What could urban night-life teach us about how to manage and analyze urban daytime in a better way?
Papers may focus on the following areas of research (non- exhaustive):
1 / Institutional production of urban spaces at night:
How should urban planning be designed for peaceful night urbanity? We want to question how public policies design spaces, community facilities and public services suited to different forms of daytime sociability and not for night-time. Thus, institutional initiatives should be questioned.
At a micro- scale, we can focus on how treatment of "urban places" (creation of pedestrian areas,...) and their interconnection creates or discourages some practices. We have to question this phenomenon. The underlying issue is to analyze the interactions between the components of the urban landscape and new forms of occupation; i.e., the interactions between the (individual or collective) actor and its environment. The affordances permitted by the environment have to be questioned.
General issues are interesting to take into account, such as the issues of territorial development with new forms of tourism (city-break, easyjet-setting,...) or urban marketing:
movement of patterns to promote their city, their nightlife, related to night formal economy.
How should we consider a night-time public policy which articulates social policy, youth, cultural, transport policies?
2 / Informal production of urban spaces at night:
This axis explores the gap between a space designed by specific political actors and professional planning as well as the perceptions, and experiences, of this designed space at night. The potential to redefine the status of spaces, their new place names and their functions (through its uses) is the question.
Gender and sexuality are essential dimensions of interactions between actors. The unaccepted uses of public space by different forms of sexuality (prostitution, gay cruising areas, …) or access to the street by gender inequality (discrimination against women, insults, assaults, …) are possible inputs. Moreover, party-goers and homeless people, informal vendors,... are the sign of other modes of appropriation. For instance, the individual or collective occupation, in the interstices of the city, for festive or for informal trade, will blur the boundaries between private and public space. Question inhabiting urban night-life in a diachronic perspective may be interesting to better understand their specificities.
We have to question how these bodies claim ownership of nocturnal spaces, practice
inclusion or exclusion situations, permitted by night experiences, have to be analyzed and discussed.
3 / Negotiations between institutional regulations and practical standards:
Historically, the feeling of insecurity associated with the dark hours rarely fitted with the freedom of movement in the street. However, a critical reflexivity on these technical devices -defended by citizen groups- to develop a feeling of security and make public space the most hospitable possible should be initiated. The construction of myths, folklore and popular narratives about night-time and its lovers, about its moral condemnation or exaltation, is a real issue. The analysis of representations about urban night-life in cinema, art, literature is interesting.
Urban nights should challenge more and more researchers to make the night-life pleasant. Several researchers are wondering how spatial regulation of nocturnal activities is operated from the perspective of government, or from an informal perspective, especially in the economic spectrum (drug, itinerant trade, ...). With diverse representations about the night, they also study the emergence, affirmation and resistance of practices around places where conflicts of uses reveal specific modes of governing. We have to question night as an area of production of legal norms, but also as an area of production of practical standards, of rules of conduct to follow in a social group. Night would be a space-time where the norms (de)consolidate themselves, cross and negotiate themselves in the discourses of city dwellers, according to different urban contexts. We have to question how territories are shared at the scale of neighborhood and at the scale of cities and to identify contradictions and points of disagreement and agreement with stakeholders in the urban government.
However, the institutional control of these territories doesn’t exist everywhere, for everybody and at any time. The ability of users to experience the night across multiple urban trajectories, sometimes transgressive, is questioned, in order to look deeper in the question of informalities and management of illegalities. Nocturnal issues are new for public authorities, thus, they aren’t institutionalized. Can normalization of nocturnal urban spaces reconcile the trajectories of all city dwellers and combine good cohabitation?
The scientific committee will be interested in, but not limited to, the above list of questions and invites proposals that raise other issues as well. We will pay particular attention to communications proposing:
critical assessments of existing methods and data used to approach or measure urban night-life;
comparative perspectives, either inside an urban agglomeration, between several agglomerations, or between different cultural regions, …; studies concerning urban spaces that have been studied less than central, dense, old, well-equipped and frequented neighbourhoods
interdisciplinary approaches and how to manage these.
2) Proposals and communications:
Submission and communication instructions for authors will be found exclusively in the dedicated e-mail: colloque.nuitsurbaines@gmail.com
2.1. Abstract submission
Communication proposals will have to be submitted anonymously in PDF format, with an abstract of 3,000 to 5,000 characters (spaces included) specifying:
- which question(s) of the call does the proposal respond to, - a provisional title,
- the domain in which the proposal brings new knowledge,
- what is the specific research question discussed in the communication, - the context and factual data that construct the argumentation
- the principal conclusions of the communication.
Proposals can be submitted in the following languages: English – French – Spanish.
2.2. Evaluation and selection of proposals
The proposals will be submitted for peer-review by at least two members of the scientific committee (external expertise could be obtained should a specialised proposal requires it).
After the pre-selection of the highest quality proposals by the scientific committee, the organisers will compose the detailed programme of sessions and will decide on the final selection, ensuring that the selected authors represent a variety of scientific positions, geographical origins, generations and genders.
3) The workshop:
During these study days, several activities are planned:
- presentation of the study RFT, by the authors and the research group of Labex Futurs Urbains (Urban Pedestrian Mobilities)
- meeting with operational actors, city-dwellers and/or politicians (to be confirmed) - explore walking in Paris or in its fringes.
Total provisional duration of the workshop is two days. In order to promote an ethic where listening is deemed equally important to speaking, we would like to ask potential participants to plan being present and taking part in all sessions of the workshop.
4) Financial coverage for all authors of selected papers:
there are no registration fees;
breakfast for two days;
two lunchtime meals;
All travel expenses between Paris and city of origin, as well as all other accommodation fees, will be covered by the participants.
5) Publication:
Following the workshop, an editorial committee will be constituted to put together a collective publication based on presented communications. This committee will propose to authors potential modifications of their communication in order to elaborate a work of the highest quality, to be published.
Other kinds of collaboration are possible, creating links between researchers and operational actors interested by these questions.
6) Schedule and deadlines:
31 July 2014: Deadline for the submission of proposals
26 Sept. 2014: Shortlisting of proposals and publication of preliminary programme
15 Dec. 2014: Deadline for the submission of titles and final abstracts and publication of detailed programme
05-06 March 2015: Workshop.
7) Scientific Committee:
R. Atkinson: professor of sociology at The University of York P. Buhagiar: research analyst in psychosociology at DUCT (Paris)
G. Chelkoff: professor of atmosphere’s ecology and architectural conception at The ENSA of Grenoble and researcher atCRESSON
F. Cruces: professor of anthropology at The UNED (Madrid)
JM Deleuil: professor of geography and planning at The INSA of Lyon and researcher at The EVS (UMR 5600)
C. Deschamps: professor of socio-anthropology at The ENSA Paris Val-de-Seine and associate researcher at Sphiapol/Lasco of The University Paris-ouest – Nanterre – La Défense D. Desjeux: professor of anthropology at The University Paris Descartes and researcher at CEPED (UMR 196)
S. Fiori: teacher at The ENSA of Lyon and researcher at LAURE-EVS
Y. Grafmeyer: emeritus professor of sociology at The University Lumière of Lyon 2
L. Gwiazdzinski: professor of geography at The University Joseph Fourier of Grenoble and researcher at Pacte 5194 (UMR CNRS-IEP-UJF-UPMF)
P. M. Hadfield: associate researcher in criminology at The University of Leeds and consultant A. Montandon: emeritus professor of general and compared literature at The University Blaise Pascal (Clermont II)
C. Moreau: sociologist at Jeudevi and associate researcher at LARES (Rennes 2)
T. Paquot: professor of philosophy at The University Paris-est Créteil Val-de-Marne (IUP) and researcher at Lab’Urba
A. Perraut Soliveres: Doctor in educational sciences and senior manager nurse at medical center of Bligny (Essonne)
J. Schlor: professor of cultural studies at The University of Southampton R. Shaw: associate teacher in geography at The University of Durham J. Tadié: geographer and research analyst at The IRDL.
8) Organisation Committee:
Defrance A., PhD student, Université Paris-ouest Nanterre, Lavue Fer S., PhD student, Université Paris-I, Prodig
Guérin F., PhD student, Université Paris-est, Lab’Urba
Hernandez Gonzalez E., architect and Doctor in urbanism, ATER (IFU, Lab’Urba)
