City-centre Revitalisation: Problems of Fragmentation and Fear in the Evening and Night-time City

Over the past 30 years the pre-eminent commercial status of the city centre in the retail system of British cities has been challenged by the competitive impact of retail decentralisation. A contemporaneous decentralisation of office and leisure activities has exacerbated the situation. At the same time, early redevelopment strategies have created significant degrees of spatial fragmentation between functions and the loss of a substantial residential population. In the contemporary social climate, these changes have resulted in negative implications for the perception of safety and the generation of fear and anxiety amongst all users of the city centre. Consequently, safety issues have accentuated the emerging problems of the city centres, particularly for evening and night-time activities. City-centre revitalisation strategies have increasingly aimed to extend 'vitality and viability' beyond the temporal divide associated with the '5pm flight'. This has involved the incorporation of the '24-hour city' concept. However, this strategy has proved problematic due to the negative perceptions of safety, which are associated with the emergence of an 'exclusionary' youth culture in many major cities in recent years. This paper seeks to examine the nature and scale of the obstacles to the revitalisation of the evening and night-time economy and culture of Swansea and Cardiff in order the better to inform strategies which aim to instigate the 24-hour city concept. The study reveals substantial obstacles to the realisation of a vibrant 24-hour city, the scale of which suggests the need for considerable and concerted planning and development efforts if they are to be overcome. Many opportunities exist but the impediments suggest that progress in the direction of a 'liveable' 24-hour city is likely, at best, to be slow and incremental in the British situation.