Nocturnal urban imaginaries : the rise and fall of Turin as a 24-hour party city

Abstract

Nocturnal urban imaginaries are a powerful instrument to examine how the night has been planned, experienced, and thought of in post-industrial urban settings. Through these imaginaries, we tackle Turin’s shift from one company town to post-industrial city and its implication for the night and its activities. Thanks to a qualitative analysis of interviews with a data-driven modality we make sense of the way night punters approach going out. We identify three imaginaries that we call ‘confetti’, ‘24-hour party’ and ‘Notti Bianche’, looking beyond the bidimensional and romanticised mystery of the night. Moreover, we examine how these imaginaries perform at the level of local governance and policing ; nightlife on offer (type of venues/events and their spatialisation) ; and the experiences (practices and affect) of night punters. We argue that domesticating, regulating, and overseeing nightlife has a detrimental and constraining impact on the way people engage with and enjoy the night, curbing its potential to serve as a realm of joy, escapism, and excitement.