Annals of Leisure Research,

Vol. 15, No. 2, July 2012, 132
147

Work and play in the city: some reflections on the night-time leisure
economy of Sydney
David Rowea* and Rob Lynchb
a
Instiute for Culture and Society, University of Western Sydney, Sydney, Australia; bUniversity
of Technology, Sydney, Australia

This article examines changing patterns of work and play in the context of
Sydneys night-time leisure economy. It documents some of the substantial
changes that have occurred to the structure of work which have had clear
ramifications for the leisure industry, including the proliferation of part-time,
service-oriented labour within the leisure industry itself. These consequences
include continuing and new manifestations of youth culture, and of anxieties
concerning it. In examining such leisure phenomena it is argued that general,
global trends can be discerned as well as specific, local adaptations produced by
Sydneys specific history, geography and socio-cultural complexion. There is also
some consideration of how political interventions through planning and even the
hosting of mega events such as the 2000 Olympics have varied and contested
impacts on the city, its leisure provision and lifestyle amenity. It is concluded
that Leisure Studies can make a significant contribution to the analytical
understanding of after-dark life and the emergence of the 24-hour city.
Keywords: work; play; night-time economy; youth culture; mega-events; leisure
industry

Introduction: rhythms of the city

Williamsons (1987) play (also made into a film, 1988) Emerald City ironically
proposes that Sydney, Australias largest conurbation and principal contender for
world city status, is an ideal space for pleasure and leisure but is beset by anxiety and
envy. The constant tension over the need to earn enough to survive in and enjoy the
city, and for the middle class to triumph in the status competition for the best urban
position (usually involving Harbour Views), is exacerbated by the restructuring of
work and play. The increasing de-regulation and flexibility of working hours and the
growth of the services sector have meant that large numbers of people both produce
and consume leisure in the inner city. The Central Business District (CBD) in Sydney
is in close proximity to its principal leisure precincts, simultaneously attracting people
as workers, residents and sundry fun seekers. Promoting a vibrant 24-hour city with a
thriving night-time economy is now the norm for any urban settlement with major
international visitor destination or even world city ambitions. If Sydneys more
affluent residents as represented by Williamson are in competition for the best
harbour views, the city itself is engaged in a global competition to enhance the views
that others have of it, and that promotes its urban culture as an essential component
of place marketing and status competition (Stevenson 2003).
*Corresponding author. Email: d.rowe@uws.edu.au
ISSN 1174-5398 print/ISSN 2159-6816 online
# 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/11745398.2012.659716
http://www.tandfonline.com

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Floridas (2002) often-quoted work on the rise of the creative class makes an
economic argument in favour of civic leisure amenity. That is, the most skilled,
creative workers who will generate twenty-first-century economic value are mobile
and will need to be attracted to places that are vibrant, accepting of diversity and are
the most liveable. While Florida concentrates on competition between cities for
liveability, Zukin (1982) has focussed on the flow of new, relatively affluent residents
into redundant industrial and warehouse spaces in inner-cities that have been
expedited by speculative property development in ways that transform the urban
ecology. Through their rather different approaches, Florida and Zukin have signalled
the shift towards more fluid inner-urban spaces that is increasingly placing desirable
residences alongside late-night leisure amenities within the same city quarters.
Where workers live and play, and the extent to which they can co-exist peacefully with
others who might want stimulation or slumber at times that suit their diverse life
schedules, have become important contemporary social and urban issues. Elements of
this night-time economy (Lovatt and OConnor 1995) have emerged and intersected
with each other in ways that pose some intriguing questions regarding both work and
leisure. The complexities and contradictions of a city that never sleeps, staffed by a
sleep-deprived, time-poor workforce, is of increasing concern to social scientists,
planners, local government, police, leisure providers, residents and leisure seekers.
In this article,1 we address some of the socio-cultural implications of the
development of the night-time economy, specifically in the Australian context, and
focus on Sydney, its CBD and surrounding suburbs. Sydney,2 as Australias most
populous city and its principal gateway for overseas visitors, is, it is argued, a salient
test bed for current debates about the nature and trajectory of after-dark leisure. We
use the concept of the night-time leisure economy as a more specific adaptation of
the general phenomenon of the night-time economy (Lovatt and OConnor 1995),
which was first developed to describe the revitalization of the declining, manufacturing-oriented day-time economy of inner-city spaces caused by de-industrialization
through the provision of services in the evening and night-time periods (Hobbs et al.
2003). We have inserted the word leisure to emphasize the nature of the activities on
which we will focus, and also to suggest a less literal treatment of the term economy,
within which we include both financial transactions as well as the various forms of
socio-cultural exchange that involve questions of value, regulation and resources. In
this article we will not engage in any detailed theoretical discussion of the urban
dynamics of late modernity and/or postmodernity (see, for example, Bramham and
Wagg 2009) concerning the work-leisure relationship (Rojek 2010). Instead, using
Sydney as a case study, we will examine some of the significant ways in which
changes to work, leisure and city living articulate with each other in order to invite
greater attention and discussion from Leisure Studies scholars and researchers.
Leisure and labour in the city
Leisure as we know it emerged with urbanization, industrialism and capitalism in the
West, when work became subject to calculations of time, and workers organized,
especially through guilds and trade unions, to wrest more temporal freedom for
recreation from their employers (Veal 2004). As working days and weeks were
reduced, a more solid structure of work/leisure time and space emerged in broader
terms, with roughly between the hours of 9
5 for work and evenings for leisure, with
the weekend being devoted to leisure and recreation (Clarke and Critcher 1985).

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During the twentieth century this relatively orderly arrangement saw the establishment of a recognizable leisure dimension within working-class culture, and was
accompanied by increasing suburbanization, which resulted in growing cities
radiating outwards and the development of owner-occupied houses managed
primarily by non- or part-time working women in its middle decades (Clarke,
Critcher, and Johnson 1987). Leisure at this time was restricted mainly to amateur
home-and neighbourhood-centred pastimes, which were often gender segregated
(Aitchison 2003; Wearing 1998). Television was just beginning to reconstruct the
home as a site of entertainment, and leisure outings to the city and its amusements
occurred within relatively limited time frames (Rowe 2006). The experience of eating
out, and even of bringing cooked food home, was something of a treat and only
reserved among the non-affluent for birthdays and other ritual life events. It is
possible to exaggerate the Stepford Wives orderliness of this time, which was very
much an image of Anglo, middle-class, male-dominated leisure, but it is nonetheless
recognizable as a substantial element within, for example, Fordist, post-World War II
Australia (Lynch and Veal 2006).
These arrangements, which predominated for a relatively short time, and were
disrupted by wars, recessions and social upheavals, soon began to change as wider
transformations have occurred both in Australia and, unevenly across the globe,
including the accelerating movement of women into the full and part-time workforce;
large-scale migration from a wider range of source countries; the de-industrialization
of inner cities; the flow of populations back into the inner city through the growth of
densely packed, multiple-occupancy dwellings; the gentrification of some inner-city
neighbourhoods, and so on (Blackshaw 2010; OConnor and Wynne 1996; Rojek
2000). The nature of work was also beginning to change, especially with the rise of
the service and information sectors that are much more task- than time-oriented, and
forms of post-Fordist continuous production operating on just in time schedules
accompanying a de-regulation of work and leisure hours (Rojek 2010; Rowe and
Lawrence, Part 2, 1998).
The leisure industry, which had grown to capitalize on the surplus time and money
of the population, also began to change. Television viewing was well installed as the
principal domestic leisure pursuit that progressively included multiple, ever-widening
screens in various rooms of the house. Later, computer games and Internet-based
leisure reinforced the home as a sophisticated site for leisure (Livingstone 2002; Lynch
and Veal 2006). Leisure outside the home, though, was already significant, with the
multiplex cinema and games parlour becoming popular as well as the late-night coffee
bar and all-night club. As a result, the leisure labour force has increased to match the
greater diversity of leisure practices and modes of consumption outside the home. For
example, the City of Sydney accounts for more than 35% of metropolitan employment
in the broadly defined Creative Industries, and has over half of Sydney-wide
employment in the industries of Performing Arts Venues; Services to the Arts;
Newspaper Publishing; and Film and Video Distribution (City of Sydney 2011a).
This diversity of the leisure labour force is revealed in data presented by Lynch
and Veal (2006), which demonstrates a base of 28 different categories of employment
in the culture, sport, recreation, entertainment, tourism and government enterprises.
Within each of the sub categories such as casinos or arts and museums, there is also a
further variety of occupational categories. Part-time and casual work is prevalent in
many of the jobs in this area. According to the most recent employment data from
the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2007), most people involved in culture and

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leisure activities had only short-term involvement (up to 13 weeks of the year) or
were involved for less than 10 hours per week over a 12-month period. Of those
employed, 39% were paid less than $5000 over the year, 26% received between $5000
and $39,999, and 24% earned $40,000 or more (ABS 2007), with the higher rates of
paid employment occurring in the state capital cities. The largest category of leisure
industry employment is for waiters/bar attendants (Lynch and Veal 2006), an area of
work that is typified by insecure, part-time, evening work.
In terms of population growth and the overall labour market, the city of Sydney
absorbed approximately 20% of the entire Sydney metropolitan residential growth
between 2001 and 2006, and the largest increase of any Local Government Area
(LGA) was in the metropolitan area (double the population increase of the second
and third fastest growing LGAs). Between the years 2001 and 2009, the residential
population of the City of Sydney grew by 49,000 people, which was a 38% increase.
In 2006, the size of the City of Sydneys labour force was 87,047 persons, of which
20,843 were employed part-time (23.9%) while 60,384 were full-time workers (69.4%).
The city itself had approximately 20% of all people employed in the Sydney
metropolitan area. Between 2001 and 2006 the number of people in the labour force
increased by 12,733 people, which was a 17.1% increase (City of Sydney 2011b).
Thus, employment (including in the broad leisure sector) and population in the
centre of Sydney can be seen to be co-related.
This picture of the labour market is a mixed one. However, the variety of leisure
work is noteworthy, as are the low levels of pay, lack of tenure, casualization and
irregular, part-time hours in this area of employment. Given the city locations of
significant sections of the entertainment, hospitality, alcohol and gambling
industries, it is evident that the CBD and environs is a leisure magnet, and is a
complex fabric of work and leisure flows and activities. There are clusters which are
dominated by hospitality (for example, The Rocks, Circular Quay, Cockle Bay, and
Woolloomooloo), as well as cultural facilities dedicated to exhibition, performance
and entertainment (for example, the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre,
George Street cinema precinct, and Darling Harbour). These precincts may be used
by different people for different purposes. For example, under-employed workers
with time on their hands, over-worked people seeking leisure whenever and wherever
they can find the time, nine to fivers coming into the city for scheduled nights out,
and residents sharing their place of domicile and recreation with each new influx of
fun-seekers, all have different orientations to the varieties of leisure in the city. There
are also leisure workers whose major labour commitments are at peak times, like the
weekend, who then make service demands on other leisure workers when it is their
turn to party.
There is evidence of increasing tension between people in their contrasting roles
of workers, leisure seekers and residents (Rowe and Bavinton 2011). If we take, for
example, the phenomenon of the weekend as a period of rest for the workforce in
general, then it might be expected that there would be minimal industrialized leisure
provision and maximum home-centredness, with leisure outside the home involving
little in the way of financial transaction. But this is patently not what has occurred
under late capitalism (Cook 2006). With the extension of retailing across the week,
demands to take up spare economic infrastructure capacity and the constant
inducements to consume leisure, leisure relationships become more complex and
prone to conflict. There are people who want their chosen leisure form on demand
and others who provide leisure services but wish to protect their own entitlement to

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leisure. At the same time, there are those whose domestic proximity to key spaces of
leisure in increasingly population-dense urban environments means that their
everyday lives are deeply affected by other peoples work and leisure choices. Because
the roles of leisure participant, worker and resident are multiple and intersecting,
there are many cases of conflicting interests in different contexts.
Significant social and cultural changes have occurred over the past four decades
which have had a deep impact on leisure opportunities and practices, not least
among which is the burgeoning of night-time leisure. The number of young people
living in the parental home well into adulthood has increased (ABS 2009),
stimulating the young-adult-oriented component of the leisure environment given
their higher level of disposable income by virtue of living in a low or no rent
environment. The multi-generational density of living that is produced by such
households has also resulted in a dynamic whereby young home stayers have both
the means and the motive to distance themselves from their parents at night, just as
the latter might seek the restoration of some temporary domestic space once
available in eras when young adults vacated the family home at an earlier age. Out of
this longer home stay phenomenon a stimulatory effect on the night-time leisure
economy can be discerned. As noted earlier, home entertainment involving media
and information technology is an established, central aspect of contemporary leisure.
The proliferation of new technologies beyond the landline telephone and television,
such as the now ubiquitous voice mobile and text messaging communication,
facilitates a dynamic ebb and flow of groupings around the city. Paging services were
first used two decades ago to help organize rave parties seeking to evade
surveillance and control by the authorities (Redhead 1990, 1993; Thornton 1995),
and now much more advanced mobile and online communication technologies can
be deployed for such leisure purposes as mobbing and other spontaneous events
(Gibson and Pagan 2006).
The structure of the working week and patterns of working hours have now
changed and patterns of city living, particularly in Sydney, have also been overhauled
by various local, state and federal government initiatives over the past three decades
as elaborated below (ABS 2006a; City of Sydney 2000 2008b; Neilson 2008). These
social, cultural and technological changes have, separately and in combination, had a
profound effect on the night-time leisure economy of the city. The resultant erosion
of the social, spatial and temporal boundaries between the worker, leisure seeker and
resident that provides twenty-first-century life with an openness and a complexity
that is unprecedented
but also creates the conditions for more intensive
competition for the uses and meanings of the city as a workplace, playground and
a home. With this broad brush background to the changes associated with work,
leisure, the city and its social and cultural life over the past few decades, we will now
examine in more detail some of the trends we deem to be of key importance.
Changes: the working week, work force and residential living in the City of Sydney
Work and leisure - the latter we shall define in the broadest possible sense in order to
avoid the familiar taxonomical detour as discretionary activity - have been
historically linked since the industrial revolution. The length, structure and patterns
of participation in the working week have had a direct effect on the consumption and
provision of leisure in urban settlements such as Sydney. We look first at some general
data on the working week in Australia, assuming that as more than two thirds of the

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Australian population lives in major cities, then the Sydney data can be assumed to be
broadly representative of the national picture. As the Australian Bureau of Statistics
(2006a) has stated:
There has been a slight decline in the average weekly hours worked by all Australian
workers over the last two decades. The decline in average hours is the result of strong
growth in part-time employment (compared with full-time employment) and has
occurred despite increases in average hours worked by both full-time and part-time
workers. Strong growth in part-time employment, for both men and in particular
women, has increased the proportion of workers working fewer hours, resulting in a
slight decline in the overall average hours worked per week.
The hours that people work relate to their preferences and to the work that is available.
The trend towards longer hours among full-time workers, together with increases in
womens employment, has led to increases in the working hours of many families. Parttime employment is preferred by some people and is often used to help achieve balance
between paid work and personal, social and family lives. However, other part-time
workers would prefer more hours of work and the unavailability of extra hours may have
financial impacts on some individuals and their families. (ABS 2006a, 126)

Irrespective of any variations in the current economic climate, the medium-term

trend towards an increase in part-time work is clear (ABS 2006a; Wooden and Drago
2007, 3). Paradoxically, the same trend is evident in longer hours for full-time
workers. The ABS goes on to state:
Average weekly hours for full-time workers increased from 40.2 hours to 41.9 hours
between 1985 and 2005. This trend has been similar for both male and female full-time
workers, with mens hours increasing 1.9 hours per week (to 43.2 hours) over the period,
and womens increasing 1.7 hours per week (to 39.3 hours). The proportion of full-time
workers who work a standard week (35
40 hours per week) fell from 48% to 42%
between 1985 and 2005. Despite this decrease, 37% of male and 51% of female full-time
workers worked a standard week. Very long hours of work (50 hours or more per week)
have become more common for full-time workers in the 20 years since 1985, particularly
for men (ABS 2006a).

In 2010, the ABS published a further report examining trends over the past 32 years
in average actual hours worked per week. The ABS reports that the average hours
worked by full-time and part-time employed people have both increased (although,
confusingly, according to the different measure of average (actual) hours
the total
volume of labour activity in this period
worked by full-time employed people have
been decreasing since 2000). This total decrease, but component increase, can be
attributed to the changing full-time to part-time composition of the workforce (ABS
2010), and displays the broad trend of over employment among full-time workers.
Wooden and Drago (2007) have similarly replicated and interpreted the Labour
Force Survey data, concluding that the principal source of the decline in the share of
people working standard hours is the growth in part-time employment. The
proportion of employed people working part-time hours (that is, less than 35 hours
per week) has risen steadily, from 25% in 1979 to approximately 36% in figures
gathered in 2006. If these data are coupled with those on people working long
hours (see discussion above (ABS 2010)), it is apparent that an increasing number of
time poor (but financially well off) people are working 50 hours or more per week,
while more part-time employees are working fewer than the 35-hour standard

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working week. Although the latter group may not be cashed up, the increasing
workforce of part-time employees has, if not pursuing other activities such as higher
education and training, increased their quantum and flexibility of leisure hours with
which to experience and consume their discretionary pleasures. The mis-match of the
leisure resources of time and money (Brown and Rowe 1998) has resulted in different
patterns and practices of leisure in the city between those who have the resources but
little time to benefit from them, and those with time but limited material means to
engage in the purchase of leisure. In addition, the leisure landscape is complicated
by other social groups, such as the aforementioned home stayers who are in full- or
part-time work with relatively abundant discretionary funds for expenditure on
leisure given that they have neither formed nor maintained an independent home.
The distribution of work and mode of living in the city is, therefore, intimately
related to the conditions creating leisure possibilities
and saliently that of the 24hour city.
Sydneys aspiration to become a successful 24-hour city was given its first, most
overt, systematic expression in the Sydney City Councils Living City
A Blueprint
for Sydney (Sydney City Council 1994). The City Councils living city vision, and
subsequent attempted implementation, was based upon several principles, including:
. Sydney should be a multi use city with a wide range of activities and
opportunities
. The city needs a critical mass of residents
. The Council seeks a vibrant city that is active 24 hours a day (Sydney City
Council 1994, 4)
As might be expected in relation to such a big picture policy document, there has
been considerable debate about the success of this initiative (see, for example, Punter
2005), and contestation over the causes of such urban transitions (Rowe and
Bavinton 2011). But it is possible to see some elements of the living city planning
framework introduced around 1993
1994 are in the process of becoming material
realities. Table 1 reveals (as noted earlier) that there have been significant increases in
the residential and workforce population in the city since 2000.3 These have
undoubtedly had a notable effect on Sydney as a round-the-clock, lively city in
terms of providing additional services, increased spending, better infrastructure and
sheer numbers of people on the streets after dark. As a result of increased part-time
work patterns, magnified by the movement of people into the city for leisure
purposes and by the concomitant increased fluidity of their lives, after-dark leisure
has extended well beyond the residual time slots surrounding traditional working
hours.
Table 1. Changes in the city of Sydney workforce and residential population: 2001
2006.

Residents in the city of Sydney

Persons over 15 years in employment in the city
of Sydney
Source: ABS 2006b.

2001

2006

52,558
124,815

59,673
155,557

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In an explicit attempt to stimulate change and enhance the liveliness of the city,
Sydney City Council implemented an expansion program that has contributed to
increases in both the residential and commercial populations of the city over a
relatively short period of time. The residential population of the city increased by
350% between 1991 and 2000, with 76% of the new population being renters. The
new workforce in the city in this period also increased markedly, with some 35
40%
of those in employment being part-time workers, spilling out into the citys leisure
spaces at various non standard hours (City of Sydney 2000, 3). The attempt to
enliven the city continues with the City of Sydney aiming for, . . . a lively, engaging
City Centre and supporting the development of diverse, new bars and restaurants in
the City Centre (City of Sydney 2008a, 92
97). The City is planning for an
anticipated additional 95,000 jobs as well as 15,000 new residents in the city by 2030
(City of Sydney 2008a).
Accompanying this influx of residents and workers has been the development of
major city events, such as New Years Eve, the Festival of Sydney opening, Mardi
Gras, and the Vivid Festival, as well as victorious sporting team ticker tape parades,
all of which temporarily transform the city into a carnivalesque environment,
opening its spaces to other possibilities. The city leisure precincts, notably Kings
Cross/Darlinghurst, Darling Harbour/Pyrmont, and Circular Quay/George Street,4
for the most part accommodate freewheeling but commercialized activity. Other
spaces such as warehouses, footpaths, parks, Town Hall steps, laneways and
forecourts are sought out by those who seek less formally structured, commercialized, organized and surveilled leisure gatherings.
The Visions of the Living City emanating from the City Hall of the early 1990s
arguably produced over-generous residential and hotel bonuses that undermined the
quality of urban design, while the 1993 announcement which awarded the 2000
Olympics to Sydney further accelerated the pace of urban change both in the innercity and in its western suburban location at Homebush (Cashman 2006). Thus, a
combination of planning, expediency and the economic imperatives of urban
development played a key part in revitalizing city life. An Accessible City policy
was advanced through a major capital programme of civic space and street
improvements (Punter 2005) that also enhanced the amenities and life of the city
for its larger cohorts of workers, residents, visitors and tourists. At the same time,
however, changes to the built environment have only had a limited impact on urban
leisure. As a result, the City of Sydney proceeded to develop a more comprehensive
Night Time City Policy, as explained on the opening page of its night economy
website:
The City of Sydney wants to create a vibrant nightlife that offers something for
everyone. People should have choices if they are heading out at night
from a street bar
with live music, to an energetic club to later shopping, an inspiring art exhibition or
bookshop
Sydney has the largest night time economy in Australia, and the greatest residential and
commercial densities in Australia. We also have the largest number of visitors, and the
offering in Sydney at night is central to this.
Truly great and memorable global cities are those that have many options for all
members of the community, irrespective of age. They feel safe, are easy to get around,
and are easy to leave at the end of a night. They offer something across the span of the
evening, and are designed for both day and night.

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D. Rowe and R. Lynch

With this in mind, the City is developing a policy that that will broaden the range of
night time offerings and provide clear direction for Sydneys night time economy over
the next 20 years, balancing public safety as well as economic and residential growth.
(City of Sydney 2011c)

In part, such policy innovation reflects a substantial concern that the quality of city
life has deteriorated because the inner city, certainly in the Anglosphere, has become
the focus of leisure, especially for young people engaged in high levels of alcohol and
other intoxicating substance consumption (Hadfield 2004; Hayward and Hobbs
2007). The concern with the problem of youth leisure that has continually marked
debates about urban change (see, for example, Cohen 2002) is no less evident in the
recent and current Sydney milieu.

Youth and the uses of city

We focus in this section on young people because they continue to be the subject
of polarizing debates in both policy and media domains, concerning their rights to
access the night-time economy amid concerns that they are monopolizing and,
indeed, marring it (Rowe and Bavinton 2011). The concept of youth culture is
admittedly a fuzzy one (Fornas and Bolin 1995), but the activities of young people
(also a variable category, but often operationalized as people aged between 16 and
35 years) represent a definite dynamic in the city, and in particular, the city at
night. For example, the activities of dance parties, drinking, live music, hanging
out, graffiti and skateboarding occupy an important place within youth culture.
Each also exists at the margins of conventional morality (Lynch and Veal 2006,
290) and, in some instances, occurs outside the law. For young people, the city is a
place of electronically monitored public spaces but, at the same time, contains
spaces largely beyond suburban surveillance. It is a place where people and public
transport are passing in, through and out, of conviviality, opportunity and
options, of public houses, fast food and openings for what might come next
(Bavinton and Rowe 2009; Chatterton and Hollands 2001). The city is a place of
concrete shapes and skate-able structures that can be imaginatively negotiable
using the urban movement practice of parkour (Bavinton 2007). It contains
hidden but accessible spaces, with people moving nearby, walking past, standing,
gathering, providing a flexible base for anonymity or conviviality (should either be
desired).
One example of the dynamic that youth injects into the city is the so-called rave
subculture, which refers to warehouse-type parties where groups of young people
gather in sites which are not usually used or licensed for musical performance, to
listen and dance to electronic dance music replayed by disc jockeys into the early
hours of the weekend mornings (Gibson and Pagan 2006). Unlike other musical
genres of dance, music or performance already established in Sydney, which usually
take place in formal, regulated environments such as concert venues, pubs or night
clubs, rave party sites in Sydney have been organized since the late 1980s (and
peaking in the early 1990s) and are usually held in old warehouses, factories and
gymnasia (Bennett 2000; Redhead 1990; Thornton 1995). As Chan (1998, cited in
Gibson and Pagan 2006) argues, it is more the combination of venue, music and
people that creates the meanings of dance events, rather than the music itself. The
subterranean venue, then, has a subversive cultural appeal that to some degree

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141

complements other events, such as those surrounding the Gay and Lesbian Mardi
Gras, which are dedicated to socio-cultural diversity but are either officially
sanctioned or substantially tolerated (a term that, nonetheless, reveals the
persistence of homophobia within elements of the urban population). According
to Gibson and Pagan (2006, 10), These large scale events, geographically central to
the business district of Sydney, prompted the use of city spaces in semi-regulated
environments.
Rave culture is now over two decades old and has mutated and splintered in
various ways. Nonetheless, the practice of finding disused city spaces, and the
vigorous response of the police and news media to them, is a persistent phenomenon
(Homan 2003). For example, a 2008 story in the Sydney metropolitan tabloid Daily
Telegraph, describing a Rave that became a Riot, displayed a familiar approach to
the subject that, save for the innovation of social media, could have been published at
the inception of rave:
POLICE are trawling social networking sites and tracking text messages to find the
organisers of a wild party shut down by the riot squad.
About 1500 people crammed into a Camperdown warehouse for the party which was
publicised through Facebook and other online forums. Nearly 1km of Parramatta Rd
was closed yesterday as police tried to get partygoers out of the warehouse amid fire and
safety concerns. Revellers pelted police with bottles from upstairs windows. About 50
officers from Newtown were joined by a huge back-up force, including the public order
and riot squad, the dog squad, Polair and police rescue, to close down the party. Despite
the huge police presence, no arrests were made. Police are now scouring CCTV footage
to identify those who threw bottles during the incident. The free party-complete with
lasers, video installations and DJs over three floors-was advertised on Facebook and at
dance music websites including www.inthemix.com.au.
Text messages were also circulated inviting people to the party, listing the address and
encouraging people to pass on the invitation. Assistant Police Commissioner Catherine
Burn admitted that police "did not know" of the party until revellers turned up at the
warehouse. One youngster identified only as Daniel said part of the events appeal was
that it was illegal. He said there was significant drug use at the party. Going against the
grain, of course its [sic] fun, he said.Is it right? No. But is it fun? Yes. (Barrett and
White 2008)

This brief, singular example reveals the constituents of the dynamic impact of a part
of youth culture on the wider city. Its rhythms and spaces articulate with made over
city sites as non- or semi-regulated performance spaces with the less regulated
structures of living involving casual and part-time work. With post-school education
often stretching well into the twenties and some young people experiencing
intermittent or long-term unemployment, orderly career progression exerts less of
a disciplining force. The live music scene in Sydney, although not only the province of
the young, is also instructive in this context. The movement of younger populations
into the city has resulted in some conflict with (often new and older) residents over
noise, not least that involving amplified music (Homan 2003). The displacement of
live music by the provision of more lucrative gaming facilities, especially poker
machines (Johnson and Homan 2003), has also been a source of conflict over leisure
practices. The 1997 legalization of the installation of poker machines in hotels by the
New South Wales government saw gaming profits jump by 38.6% in a single year
(1998
1999) (NSW Department of Gaming and Racing 2001), and a corresponding
increase in its gambling tax revenue. The estimated loss of live music work for 67% of

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D. Rowe and R. Lynch

the musicians (in a 1999 Musicians Union survey cited in Gibson and Homan 2004,
73) reveals the precariousness of labour in that sector, alongside the culture and
leisure that it produces in specific urban environments.
Homan (2003), 132) quotes a conversation with an hotelier responding to a
question as to why he didnt have live music in his pub: Whats the point? We just
need one person to complain [about the noise levels] and we can get shut down. Wed
rather have ten poker machines, put in strippers twice a week, and were doing very
well. Johnson and Homan (2003, 132) suggest that the causes of the reduction of
inner-city live music spaces are various:
The complicity of gaming in the contraction of live music to a large extent arises from
the fact that new legislation made it a straightforward profitable alternative at a time
when numerous incremental factors were making it increasingly difficult to sustain live
music programs, most particularly in pubs. Factors in the reduction of live music
operations include changes in leisure culture, in popular music styles and formats, in
financial and legislative frameworks, in the composition of audiences, and in community
demographics. If the community wishes to sustain a live music culture, the responsibility
for doing so lies not in any single sector such as the music, hospitality or related leisure
industries, but in a concerted response involving those sectors, the members of the
community itself, and educational and government bodies (p. 1).

The general live music scene in Sydney, as well as that of rave music in particular,
highlights the complex web of interactions around any night-time economy. Different
forms of leisure compete and conflict, legal frameworks are altered to suit prevailing
interests, including, notably, the hotel industry. The consumption of alcohol has been
a constant source of dispute in debates about the night-time economy across the
world (especially in Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia
see, for example, Hobbs et al.
2003; Winslow and Hall 2006). In Australia (with Sydney often prominent) the
question of binge drinking by young people has been of considerable concern
(Farringdon, McBride, and Milford, 2000; Graham and Homel 2008; Jonas,
Dobson, and Brown 2000). As a key component of the hospitality industry, and
one that is increasingly integrated with gaming and gambling, hotels (also called
pubs, taverns, or inns) are significant providers of leisure to their patrons. They are
also classic exemplars of the fluidity of work and leisure in late modernity, staffed to
a high degree with part-time and casual workers and patronized by a range of
customers experiencing diverse diurnal rhythms, which might range from conventional 9
5 and anti-social shift work to doing time while unemployed or retired.
We have only sought here to touch on selected aspects of the night-time economy
as it relates to work and play, with specific reference to elements of youth culture that
crystallize its formal and informal dimensions, and is manifest in the interplay of
leisure, city governance and commercial processes. There are many other domains of
leisure that could have been explored, including curb-side cafe culture, al fresco and
fine dining (Punter 2005), and the realm of so-called high culture, including opera,
concert music, theatre, film and arts festivals that are central to the concept and
justification of a sophisticated, diverse night-time economy based on the influential
southern Mediterranean European model that was mobilized to commend it
(Bianchini and Parkinson 1993). Sydney, we have shown, has in response both to
external and internal forces established a night-time leisure economy that is the
dynamic construct of civic planning, commercial pressure, and citizen-consumer
interests and practices, in the context of wider transformations of work, leisure and

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urban organization. While there are no doubt specific dimensions of the Sydney
context (such as its orientation to, and valorization of, harbour life), our analysis,
suitably adjusted for local circumstances, could be applied to any city that seeks to
sustain itself in the twenty-first century through the projection of its image as a
major site of cosmopolitan leisure.
Conclusion: the nights are for tender
We have outlined how the night-time leisure economy of Sydney is contained within,
and affected by, the social, cultural, political, economic, technological and legal
changes that have occurred in Australian society and across the globe over the past
few decades. There are conflicts and disagreements among drinkers, residents,
dancers, revellers, theatre and museum goers, police, paramedics, commercial
organizations and the state concerning the competing interests of governance,
leisure, residency and commerce. The resources of local and state governments are
brought to bear both to develop spaces and opportunities to enhance leisure in the
city and to regulate co-existing, competing interests. The night-time economy and
leisure pursuits of the city are complex, fluid and in a state of constant flux. The
impulse, understandable but largely unfeasible, of some interest groups to discipline
after-dark life in strictly prescribed ways that are redolent of the first half of the
twentieth century, contrast sharply with the complex, divergent forces that are
seeking to claim the night in ensuing decades.
Sydneys night-time leisure economy is constituted at the point where changing
practices and rhythms of leisure meet equivalent processes in its provision by labour.
This encounter takes place in the spaces of the city, relationships to which are highly
variable among residents, control agents, workers and pleasure-seekers. While urban,
leisure and cultural planning, and policy prescription and implementation can set
limits on their outcomes, and night-time leisure is frequently quite predictable and
limited in scope, the spaces of the city after dark, in Sydney and elsewhere, are both
sites subject to a range of mobilities (Urry 2007) and (perhaps, ironically given
condemnations of alco-leisure) characteristically liquid (Bauman 2005). It is
certain, however, that they will remain key concerns for those seeking to analyse and
understand the many facets of contemporary leisure relationships.
We have highlighted, in a preliminary and intentionally freewheeling fashion, the
ways in which macro historical trends are encountered on the ground in urban leisure
spaces. These have common as well as distinctive characteristics. In the case of Sydney,
for example, long-form historical trends in world capitalism have fostered a work and
leisure environment that is familiar in other large cities, especially in Britain (such as
Manchester and London: see, for example, Winslow and Hall 2006). The expansion of
part-time, precarious work, formal education well into adulthood and prolonged
domicile in the parental home have combined to produce the sophisticated, systematic
promoting and marketing of alcohol to young people (Ruddock 2007) and the global
circulation of resistive youth subcultural forms, to create patterned leisure scenarios
in cities that are far distant from each other in geographical terms. But there are
elements of Sydneys night-time leisure economy that register its history and trajectory
as place, such as the spatial alignment of its harbour, CBD, inner-city neighbourhoods
and leisure precincts that produce the concentrations and flows briefly traced above.
These shifting socio-spatial relations, when articulated with the new temporal
rhythms of the 24-hour city, are both the product of urban change and induce new

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D. Rowe and R. Lynch

forms of governance (such as cultural planning and urban design) that seek to manage
and direct them according to the claims of a range of interest groups. Of particular
concern has been after-dark leisure, which has been both championed as the solution
to inner-urban decline and condemned as a major symptom, if not its cause (Rowe and
Bavinton 2004; Rowe et al. 2008). The night-time economy has been prominent in
prescriptions for the reconciliation of work and leisure needs in the city, but has also
provoked difficult questions about which kinds of work and leisure it promotes, and
how the latter can be governed in a way that, in turn, reconciles safety, diversity and
autonomy. We believe that this is a particularly compelling area for Leisure Studies
research as it demands a focus on the very social phenomena and analytical concerns
that provided its foundation as an interdisciplinary field of inquiry
the politics and
social dynamics of free time. This articles analysis of the night-time economy has
indicated that a significant component of this free time is both nocturnal and fluid.
Notes
1.

2.

3.

4.

This article began life as a short presentation at Summer Night Reflections: The City After
Dark in the Museum of Sydney Talk Series in February 2009. We thank the Museum,
especially Head Curator Caroline Butler-Bowdon, for the opportunity to trial some of our
ideas.
Some of the research and analysis for this article derives from the current Australian
Research Council Discovery Project, The City After Dark: The Governance and Lived
Experience of Urban Night-Time Culture, whose Chief Investigators are Professor
Deborah Stevenson, Stephen Tomsen, and David Rowe.
We have not attempted to adjust for the various boundary changes that have occurred in
relation to the City of Sydney Local Government Area, such as the abolition of South
Sydney Council and re-amalgamation with the City of Sydney in two stages in 2003 and
2004, or the transfer of Glebe back to the City of Sydney in 2003. These boundary changes
do not affect the overall patterns of habitation and work in the City and Sydney and its
environs under discussion.
These were the principal case study sites for the aforementioned The City After Dark
project.

Notes on contributors
David Rowe is Professor of Cultural Research, Institute for Culture and Society, University of
Western Sydney, Australia, where he was previously Director of the Centre for Cultural
Research (2006
9). His previous appointment was Professor of Media and Cultural Studies
and Director of the Cultural Institutions and Practices Research Centre at The University of
Newcastle (Australia). Davids principal research interests are in contemporary media and
popular culture, including tabloidisation, practices of journalism, media political economy,
cultural policy, academic public communication, urban culture and leisure, and, especially,
media sport. His latest books are Global Media Sport: Flows, Forms and Futures (Bloomsbury
Academic, 2011) and Sport Beyond Television: The Internet, Digital Media and the Rise of
Networked Media Sport (authored with Brett Hutchins, Routledge, 2012).
Rob Lynch is Emeritus Professor, University of Technology, Sydney, where he formerly held
the positions of Dean of Business and Head of the School of Leisure, Sport and Tourism. He
was the foundation Chair of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Leisure Studies
(1991
97). Rob is co-author of four editions of Australian Leisure (Pearson) and also coauthored Dynamics of Collective Conflict: Riots at the Bathurst Bike Races (Law Book
Company). In the general area of the sociology of sport and leisure, he has published research
on crowd disorder, museums, gambling and casino impacts, and has contributed to a range of
policy-related reports in areas such as a leisure studies research agenda, casino development

Annals of Leisure Research

145

and impact, responsible gambling, leisure and older people, liquor trading hours and alcoholrelated violence.

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