Night lives: Heterotopia,youth transitions and cultural infrastructure in the urban night

Introduction

This article seeks to revisit Foucault’s notion of heterotopia and retrieve from it conceptual insights in response to the undertheorisation of the urban night. Heterotopia is concerned with describing the complexities and experience of marginal space; but, since Foucault’s original explanation, it has become subjected to much debate and critique. Rather than promote heterotopia in its entirety (and be subject to a raft of associated critiques), I argue that a specific part of the concept—Foucault’s so-called fourth principle of temporality—warrants further exploration to develop more nuanced understandings of urban night spaces. The temporal elements of heterotopia provide a conceptual tool for understanding the relationship between cultural groups and infrastructure in spaces of the urban night.

The example I use to illustrate my argument is a sub-cultural music scene located in a drinking space: a pub called The Oxford Tavern ¹ in the Australian city of Wollongong. This is an example where the temporalities of heterotopia can be interpreted. In teasing out these temporalities, I draw particular insights from literatures on the night-time economy and music scenes regarding youth transitions. These literatures suggest that transitions from youth to adulthood find expression in the spaces of the urban night, with subsequent influence on how the urban night is understood and experienced. I wish to push such insights further: connecting to Foucault’s understanding of the temporalities of heterotopia. This article therefore seeks to connect understandings of youth transitions in urban night spaces and theoretical discussions of the temporalities of heterotopia. Making this connection has practical implications for valuing diverse experiences and infrastructures in the urban night.

The Context: Nightlife, Youth Transitions and Cultural Infrastructure

The context for this discussion is the shifting significance of urban nightscapes, as cities seek to become more competitive. City centres have increasingly been promoted as sites of mass consumption at night. This has seen a proliferation of leisure, entertainment and drinking spaces (Lovatt and O’Connor, 1995). Civic attempts at creating a night-time economy have attracted significant attention and criticism (Chatterton and Hollands, 2003; Shaw, 2010; Hae, 2011). One critique relevant here is that an increasingly profit-motivated agenda has developed in tandem with promotion of the urban night-time economy. Night-time leisure, entertainment and drinking spaces are increasingly corporatised and monopolised (Chatterton and Hollands, 2002, 2003). According to Chatterton and Hollands (2002, p. 99), one dominant form of space is the net result: mainstream nightlife spaces proliferate at the expense of both residual and alternative nightlife spaces. Mainstream nightlife spaces are corporate owned and managed pubs, nightclubs, cafes and styled bars, which come to dominate urban nightscapes. They are increasingly branded and themed, targeting financially lucrative consumer markets and identities. Opposite the mainstream are alternative nightlife spaces. These are usually smaller and independently run examples that cater to specialised youth cultures and identities, often associated with fringe fashion and music, but also diverse ethnicities, sexualities and politics. Residual spaces are the traditional pubs, ale houses and taverns with strong community ties that are rapidly disappearing or deteriorating. These three distinctions remain mixed within urban nightscapes, yet the alternative and residual become marginalised by the mainstream. Forms of social exclusion ensue.

Contradictorily, many policies and strategies leading to increased corporatisation and monopolisation of nightlife promote some semblance of diversity and vibrancy in the night-time economy, as a means of attracting investment, attention and consumption (Hae, 2011). The paradox here is that some spaces and practices of nightlife are recognised for their difference or alternate status—and are valued explicitly for this in some instances—but remain tied up with processes that inhibit their development, commodify their perceived difference or threaten their survival. In the case of the urban night, I shall explain how heterotopia provides a theoretical tool for exploring why this might be the case.

An additional theme from the night-time economy literature relevant here is a consideration of youth transitions. Young people are frequent participants in and consumers of the night-time economy; spaces of the urban night capture a significant source of their expenditure and time (Chatterton and Hollands, 2003, p. 68). Moreover, traditional linear transitions from education to work, youth to adulthood, are becoming less clear cut (Hollands, 2002). In this break from traditional youth transitions, social and cultural factors such as delaying having children, extended university education, travel, part-time work, access to disposable income and living with parents, all now influence identity formation. In the urban night, this means that cultural activities and related identities and infrastructures take on greater importance. Rather than simply constitute spaces of hedonism and escape, the urban night becomes a site of identity transformation, proving significant for young people in phases of life transition.

One site of identity transformation—and prime example of space in the urban night frequented by young people—is the live music scene. Music scenes can be defined as the people, events, organisations and situations associated with the production and consumption of a particular musical style (Cohen, 1999, p. 239). In this instance, ‘scene’ should also be considered as contingent upon a fixed social geographical base. In a Lefebvrian (1991) sense, music scene members attempt to produce cultural space in the city—venues, rehearsal space and cheap living accommodation—upon which scene-based activities rely (O’Connor, 2002; Connell and Gibson, 2003). Academic work on music scenes has also seen debate about life transitions, the ageing process and their influence on participation and identity politics (Bennett, 2006). As music scene participants grow older, they juggle ageing and other priorities in life in different ways (Davis, 2006). Scene participation remains relevant to older generations, but scene practices shift; hence older punk fans, for example, still attend gigs, although less frequently and standing at the back rather than ‘moshing’ at the front of an audience (Bennett 2006). While existing research on transitions in music scenes documents the influence of ageing processes on identity formation (Bennett, 2006; Davis, 2006), I wish to bring an especially urban, spatial focus, emphasising via a discussion of heterotopia how spaces of the urban night such as live music venues continue to hold shared and persistent meanings across generations. Live music venues are valued as spaces of the urban night even as generations pass and actual participation in them shifts. Foucault’s theory of heterotopia (specifically its temporal elements) helps to interpret how this is the case.

Before I revisit Foucault’s heterotopia in depth, it is worth emphasising the practical and political issues at stake. Vital to competitive city regeneration strategies, including night-time cultural spaces, is the provision of adequate and suitable infrastructure (Landry, 2006). More than simply managing roads, energy and waste, authorities are coming to consider the value of cultural infrastructure. Cultural infrastructures such as live music venues are physical, social and enabling spaces within a city that foster creative and cultural practices (Street, 1993), that are meaningful to young people during life transitions (Baker et al., 2009) and that flesh out strategies to promote the night-time economy (Hae, 2011). Yet they are flushed with contradictions: both commodified and contested (Chang and Teo, 2009). Some cities have attempted to build, from scratch, new purpose-built cultural infrastructure (Pratt, 2009), often incorporating sites of leisure and consumption, such as cafes and bars (Mommaas, 2004). This spatial configuration is recognisable in the creation and promotion of nightlife ‘districts’. Yet, as Hae (2011, p. 3450) describes, this frequently results in “gentrification with and against nightlife” in which the cultural vitality of nightlife districts often contributes to the gentrification of surrounding neighbourhoods. Those same facets of nightlife are often incompatible with the lifestyles of the new gentrifying class; noise and social disorder complaints ensue, and cultural venues are displaced in the name of peace and quiet (Gibson and Homan, 2004). This situation is compounded for live music venues precisely because their occupation by music scenes is a temporal phenomenon—their value as spaces of the urban night is contingent on life course transitions from youth to adulthood, transitions not necessarily shared by gentrifying newcomers. They are often stigmatised as sites of anti-social behaviour and, because participants move through the scene transiently, such venues rarely have ‘champions’ to lobby for their recognition in planning affairs.

This article then seeks to pay closer attention to the relationship between the experiences of youth transitions and cultural infrastructure. Beyond stigmatisation as sites of anti-social behaviour, how are cultural infrastructures like music venues valued in temporally complex ways by participants? And how do these infrastructures continue to be valued after active participation wanes? Such questions resonate with research on the urban night that focuses on, amongst other things, alcohol (Jayne et al., 2006) and cultural economy (Latham, 2003). These approaches have highlighted a need for more sophisticated analysis of the emergence and maintenance of social forms in specific spaces and times (Latham, 2003, p. 1703). Taking seriously the experience of cultural infrastructures in the urban night, including the narratives of past participants, goes some way to addressing this concern. I argue that the meaning of spaces, like live music venues, as vital cultural infrastructure can be helpfully interpreted through the concept of heterotopia. They are, in other words, urban spaces within which night lives are lived, in transient phases of youth and young adulthood. Before discussing one example of alternative nightlife where this is the case—a live music scene and venue in Wollongong—I turn to a close discussion of heterotopia. Foucault’s theory of heterotopia, albeit controversial, provides a spatio-temporal framework to conceptualise and value diverse nightscape experiences and infrastructures in the city.

Heterotopia: Inconsistent, Maligned, Yet Persistent

In his theory of heterotopia, Foucault sought to probe difference both spatially and discursively. The literal medical definition of heterotopia describes the physiological displacement of organs—deriving from the Greek topos (place) and heteros (otherness) (Hetherington, 1997, p. 8). For Foucault, the term first appeared briefly in the preface to The Order of Things (1970). In analysing a passage from Borges’ Chinese Encyclopaedia, Foucault explored the discursive limits, or impossibility, of understanding the fantastical categories the encyclopaedia contained.

Yet Foucault also used the term, more substantially, in a 1967 lecture to architects in Berlin. Here, Foucault described heterotopia in much more spatial terms compared with the previous discursive/linguistic application. This lecture probed spatial heterogeneity, specifically those sites Foucault deemed as counter or contradictory to the society in which they were placed. Foucault contrasted utopia—as sites with no place in reality—with his formulation of heterotopia as sites existing within all societies. These sites fulfil a purpose of both representing the totality of that society and simultaneously contesting and inverting the same ordering spatially. The 1967 lecture elaborated this analysis—Foucault went so far as to name it heterotopology—by further describing its principles. Heterotopia are: present in all societies; may change function as societies evolve; juxtapose several incompatible spaces within a real place; can be linked to slices of time; and have systems of opening and closing that regulate access (Foucault, 1986).

The 1967 lecture was published (in French) shortly before Foucault’s death in 1984 and was subsequently translated into English two years later (Foucault, 1986). While he gave permission for publication, the timing of its release and the fact that it was never reviewed or edited by Foucault has since attracted substantial criticism. For example, Harvey (2000, p. 538) argued that Foucault had, or should have, discarded the concept entirely. As it stands, its supposed theoretical shortcomings are left for others to resolve.

The way the lecture was published raised issues of compatibility with Foucault’s more recognised oeuvre. An immediate discrepancy was Foucault’s inconsistent application of heterotopia—two distinct applications existed in different texts. While the theory may be incompatible with more recognised elements of Foucault’s work, critics have pointed out that it did not discredit his better-known texts (Foucault, 1973, 1977). Instead, heterotopia remains framed as a ‘minor’ contribution (Bonazzi, 2002, p. 43) or theoretical anomaly (Saldanha, 2008, p. 2085; Genocchio, 1995). Further engagements have raised significant intellectual concerns. One such example is the argument that heterotopia retains structuralist underpinnings, characteristic of late 1960s French philosophy (Saldanha 2008, p. 2081), even though Foucault’s work is often associated with post-structuralism (although not exclusively: Foucault considered himself neither structuralist nor post-structuralist). Saldanha argued that if heterotopias are different from ‘all other spaces’ there remains a structuralist assumption that the heterotopologist can determine a coherent ‘whole’ of society against which heterotopia can be positioned (a task from which a post-structuralist would be likely to recoil).

Despite the theory’s unusual development, heterotopia has remained remarkably popular—due in part to the trend of urban, sociological and geographical scholars seeking to explain diverse case studies of marginal spaces as inherently heterotopic. ² In Of other spaces (1986), Foucault cites brothels, cemeteries, oriental gardens, honeymoon hotels, boarding schools, psychiatric hospitals, prisons, retirement homes, fairgrounds, bedrooms and ships as examples of heterotopia. While diverse, these examples are similar in that they are “scripted as spaces of both repugnance and fascination, they also function as powerful sites of the imaginary” (Gennochio, 1995, p. 38). Foucault’s eclectic list of heterotopia has been extended with contemporary examples such as Cypriote nude beaches (Andriotis, 2010), Chinese Internet cafes (Liu, 2009) and South African security parks (Hook and Vrdoljak, 2002). This abundance of seemingly endless heterotopia has raised questions of what spaces remain after heterotopic analysis (Saldanha, 2008, p. 2083). Most worryingly, heterotopia is often simplistically and uncritically embraced as an all-encompassing spatial descriptor (Gennochio, 1995, p. 36). This literal interpretation combined with the somewhat overwhelming abundance of heterotopic examples conspires to deflate heterotopia as a meaningful concept.

Attempting to rectify this problem has seen theoretical development as a process of interpreting alternate spatial ordering rather than labelling material spaces as heterotopic. Hetherington (1997) applied heterotopia to historical, rather than contemporary, examples such as the Palais Royale during the French revolution. Developing a revised framework, Hetherington argued that heterotopia are not merely sites of resistance or marginality; but may be used as a mode of analysis, revealing sites of alternate ordering. For Hetherington, the Palais Royale was not intrinsically heterotopic but can be named as such because of the “heterogeneous combination of the materiality, social practices and events located there” (Hetherington, 1997, p.8). Hetherington’s framework applies a more relational approach than the previous examples.

Notwithstanding critiques of heterotopia, I am still drawn to its ability to articulate difference, using heterotopia as an analytical tool rather than a clear-cut spatial delineation. More specifically, I want to draw on the language of one particular element of Foucault’s Of other spaces (1986) to explore temporalities in youth transitions through cultural space in the urban night. Foucault’s fourth principle of heterotopia was that they could be linked to ‘slices of time’ in that they “function at full capacity when men [sic] arrive at a sort of absolute break with their traditional time” (Foucault, 1986, p. 26). One such shift from traditional linear time can be represented as spaces of indefinite accumulation such as museums or libraries. Contradictorily opposite accumulations of time are heterotopias of fleeting temporal experience, such as festivals or fairgrounds (1986, p. 26). Similar to other segments in Of other spaces, this is a strand not entirely resolved or pursued, but briefly and tantalisingly referenced. Foucault discussed Polynesian vacation villages as a recently invented “new kind of temporal heterotopia … that offer a compact three weeks of primitive and eternal nudity to the inhabitants of the cities” (Foucault, 1986, p. 26). Soja (1995, p. 16) subsequently argued that Foucault saw these temporal heterotopias converging “in compressed, packaged environments that seem to both abolish and preserve time and culture, that appear somehow to be both temporary and permanent”. Notwithstanding Foucault’s truncated explanation, the theme of temporality is a thread of heterotopic thought which this article seeks to progress. I wish to utilise this temporal framework (heterotopia as both accumulating and fleeting time of difference) as a mode of analysis. I stress the importance of a temporal reading of cultural spaces in the urban night, including what this may mean for cultural infrastructure provision.

Drawing on the temporal interpretation of heterotopia, a punk music scene and venue can be thought of as heterotopic in that it continuously accumulates articulations of otherness, achieved through the narration of relatively fleeting but repetitive experiences of scene-space. Just as Foucault used museums as an example of accumulating time (Foucault, 1986, p. 26), we can think of music scenes and venues in the urban night, as a similar accumulation of time. In this instance, generational transitions through specific cultural infrastructure accumulate to create a particular dynamic of urban space. Yet additionally, expression and belonging in the music venue and scene constitute relatively fleeting temporal engagements when compared with the arc of one’s life. This is reminiscent of Foucault’s festivals and fairgrounds (Foucault, 1986, p. 26). In what follows, I flesh out this tension between accumulating and fleeting time in the example of the Oxford punk music scene in Wollongong. While many spaces (diverse, marginal or mainstream) could be theorised as both fleeting and accumulating time, what matters here are the spaces within which youth transitions and narrations of ‘otherness’ find expression in the urban night. To clarify: by emphasising the importance of such temporalities in this article, I do not wish to imply some ontological certainty over space—to claim a punk music venue as definitively heterotopic. As Soja noted, Of Other Spaces begins with Foucault exploring “the contemporary interplay between the historical and geographical imaginations” (Soja, 1995, p. 16)—the problematic obsession of the spatial negated by a societal emphasis on history. Such ontological discrepancies have been significantly advanced more recently by geographers who eschew the space/time binary (May and Thrift, 2001). By incorporating both space and time into analysis of a particular cultural infrastructure—the Oxford live music venue—this article seeks instead to contribute to better theorisation of the urban night.

Wollongong’s Urban Nightscape and the Oxford

Wollongong is a city with a population of 280,000 situated 80 kilometres south of Sydney (Australia’s largest city). Traditionally associated with steel production, Wollongong has actively distanced itself from this image over the past few decades (Haughton, 1989; Waitt and Gibson, 2009). Successive urban strategies and place-making schemes have seen Wollongong’s City Council attempt to engineer a transition from steel, to capitalising on its diverse ethnic composition, and subsequent rebranding as a ‘city of innovation’ (Waitt and Gibson, 2009). Post-industrial transitions continue; further substantial job cuts were announced from the city’s steel works in mid 2011 as the fallout from the global financial crisis continued. Attempting to distance the city from rust-bound images, in 2007 Wollongong City Council implemented a regeneration strategy named the Blue Mile Vision, attempting to capitalise on Wollongong’s striking position along Australia’s east coast. The Blue Mile Vision aims to improve access between the city’s commercial centre and bordering beaches, and also includes the development of a cultural precinct including a sports stadium, bars and clubs, the region’s major entertainment centre (attracting national and international performers) and a yet-to-materialise multipurpose arts space. This is a prime example of a city-centre commercial regenerative strategy, including recognisable elements of the formulaic night-time economy.

Adjacent to this cultural precinct was the Oxford, a pub and live music venue located in the city centre of Wollongong. The Oxford was regarded as the region’s premier ‘alternative’ music venue for two decades before closing in July 2010. Such a link between a pub and a live music venue is common in Australia (Homan, 2003). Traditionally, young bands in Australia worked their way ‘up the ladder’ performing a circuit of pubs, doubling as live music venues. Several of Australia’s most recognised rock bands including AC/DC, INXS and Midnight Oil developed careers from such a ‘pub-rock’ base. Hence it is important to understand that the Oxford was both home to a music scene and pub-as-cultural-infrastructure. Using Chatterton and Hollands’ (2003) framework the Oxford juxtaposed residual and alternative spaces of nightlife. It was residual as an example of an older style pub with deteriorating infrastructure—outside its guise as a music venue, the pub housed casual drinkers, a bistro and gambling facilities heavily associated with masculine and working-class identities. Yet, as is the case with many live music scenes in Australia, the Oxford was also an alternative space. The pub provided flexible space for live music scenes to inhabit intermittently at night—in stark contrast to its day-time identity. The ‘scene’ at the Oxford involved a process of maintaining the relationship between performing and consuming local live music and simultaneously negotiating that relationship with the pub’s management and infrastructure. This process was heavily reliant on specific ‘local’ interpretations of music practice and key gatekeepers within the scene (Gallan, 2012).

In a monopolised night-time economy (over half Wollongong’s pubs have for some time been owned by one company—the RDL group) the Oxford was regarded as the city’s only ‘alternative’ option, described by scene participants as a ‘haven’ amongst the city’s other bars and nightclubs. This status arose from its provision of free, local and original live music every Wednesday to Saturday night. The venue’s entertainment and social characteristics were markedly different from the majority of options within Wollongong’s night-time economy (Waitt et al., 2011). The Oxford housed diverse genres of music and sub-cultural styles, the emphasis was on geographical proximity—an interpretation of localism—rather than stylistic divisions upon genre lines (although the example discussed later focuses on punk). Hence the venue gained reputation for supporting unsigned local bands rather than for any given style of music.

In sum, the Oxford’s status within Wollongong—located within the urban centre, bordering the proposed Blue Mile cultural precinct, but marginalised within the night-time economy—was unique. At this point, it would be tempting simply to assert that the Oxford was a heterotopia given its ‘difference’ and ‘otherness’. However, simply labelling the Oxford as a heterotopia misses the point; rather, what was distinctive here was the manner in which the Oxford was persistently imagined and experienced as heterotopic, by groups whose association with it was transient. This temporal tension between accumulating social meaning and fleeting association is of particular interest here.

Night Lives: The Oxford as Heterotopia through Intersecting Youth Transitions and ‘Scenes’

Between July 2009 and April 2010, I interviewed 26 people who at one time or another participated in the Oxford’s music scene. Interviews were structured around each participant narrating personal history with the music venue and scene. From this sample, I draw on six participants who all expressed a self-identified transition out of attending shows at the venue, and thus no longer participated regularly in the scene. The recollections of these participants spoke to varied experiences of the Oxford; accounts overlapped and converged repeatedly. There was not a constant or absolute account, but a succession and intersection of temporal experiences of the Oxford, over decades, as generations changed and new ‘scenes’ developed to slowly replace older ones. What such scenes had in common was their physical location within the Oxford and a shared sense of it as ‘different’ from all other nightlife options. Participants discussed the Oxford’s live music scene from 1988 to 2010 in an overlapping fashion, focusing on their active involvement within the Oxford’s scene but also reflecting on the contemporary uses of the venue.

The Oxford was clearly an important cultural resource in the urban night for the scene’s participants, where they derived pleasure from the participatory practices of the scene. Common throughout participants’ responses were the practices involved in producing and consuming live music, in addition to drinking and socialising. In other words, they valued the conjunction between the activities of the music scene and the facilities provided by the pub, as Jess (F/23) remembered

A normal night in the past has been seeing a couple of friends’ bands play … amazing local bands that I really fucking love and had an awesome trashy time, we’ve all got up and sung, danced and hugged each other and laughed… I’d get so shitfaced that I’d be ready to vomit, I’d give someone my beer to hold, run to the bathroom and vomit, then just come back and drink my beer and go back to the bar.

The Oxford bred highly loyal followers. For example, Ian (M/25) recalled his peak attendance at the venue: “Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, sometimes I’d go down like five or six nights in a row”. All respondents revealed a similar level of participation contributing to a sense of community within the Oxford, as Brazen (M/24) described

Everybody knew everyone, there was a real atmosphere … I remember you could walk into the pub any night of the week and know about 80 per cent of the people in there, plus the bar staff knew your name … and security too.

As discussed in existing literatures on the night-time economy, the Oxford was often stigmatised as a site of anti-social behaviour. Narratives that refer to vomiting and getting ‘shitfaced’ (Jess), even if they contribute to a sense of community within the venue (Brazen), are unlikely to help the venue and music scene’s credibility within planning and policy circles. These types of behaviour are at odds with the vision of nightlife districts that competitive strategies seek to promote (Hae, 2011)—certainly, in the case of the Oxford, they were at odds with Wollongong City Council’s Blue Mile blueprint. Yet as spaces in which night lives are lived, a temporal interpretation of heterotopia allows us to understand the way cultural infrastructure can be valued differently by participants over the course of youth transitions.

Participants revealed that the Oxford meant more than a site of hedonism; it was also a site in which rites of passage were experienced and remembered. Infrastructures such as this facilitate the temporal transition through spaces of the urban night. Oxford music scene participants began regularly attending the venue from different ages ranging from 18 to 30. Their experiences were significantly formulated by the legal age for drinking—18 in Australia. At the younger end of the youth transitions spectrum, this establishes a dichotomy of underage/legal age within both the urban night and music venues and scenes. Because pubs are key live music venues, young people are effectively restricted from access to the scene until 18. Turning 18 is hence a major rite of passage in Australia, enabling drinking and attending live music in pubs for the first time and, in Wollongong, the Oxford was the prime destination. Hence participants were aware of the venue’s iconic status well before their first venture into Wollongong’s night-time economy—as Muz (M/28) recalled

When I was well underage, the Oxford was a coveted place for me, which I longed for, which I knew of, but didn’t really know personally. In my early teens, the Oxford represented a place of mystery. While there was no shortage of all ages shows, the bands I liked played the Oxford. Initially all I knew was there were bands there and I couldn’t get in, and this set me up for years of longing. From the age of 12 onwards I would look at local gig guides and make a quick assessment of what the month would be like … The Oxford featured regularly to the point of frustration.

This response reveals an intangible, often overlooked, element of night-time cultural infrastructure, one that a temporal reading of heterotopia assists in theorising: that imagination of particular spaces in the urban night as ‘different’ or ‘other’ can have a formative effect on people before their legal coming-of-age and physical interaction with the space. While this respondent was yet to attended music gigs at the venue, its status in Wollongong still held meaning for him. This stage of youth transition (pre-legal age) was understood in relation to a piece of cultural infrastructure invested with particular meanings. For many of Wollongong’s youth, the Oxford was the destination for their first venture into the night-time economy—especially if they wished to explore an ‘alternative’ sub-cultural identity. When asked to describe his first memory of the Oxford, Ian revealed that it was also his first experience of going out after his legal coming-of-age

The first time I went there … I turned 18, I was hanging out with friends of mine that were into skateboarding, music … all sorts of punk-rock little indie kids, I’d been friends with since I was 16 … they were a bit older than me. They were going to the Oxford … and I remember … I was the little punk kid, ripped up jackets … buttons and studs, spikey hair and listening to the Sex Pistols. It was Saturday night, and obviously you get a bit weird when you first start going out … I remember they said “We’re going to the Oxford, you should come out” … I was really nervous, it was the first pub I ever went to. I rang them asking “What can I wear?” I was used to wearing ripped jeans, buckled shoes and thought “I’m not going to get in”. They were like, “Trust me man, you’ll be fine, no one there gives a crap”. I thought pubs you have to look respectable … in the sense you can’t walk into an establishment and people are wearing jackets with ‘anarchy in the UK’ written on them.

For first-timers who had spent teenage years feeling ‘different’ from their peers (because of music or fashion tastes, their cultural, political or sexual orientation), the Oxford provided a perceived alternative to ‘mainstream’ Australian culture and to the hegemonic corporatised night-time economy in Wollongong (see Waitt et al., 2011). Ian’s earliest experience, in 2002, occurred when the venue had been firmly established for over a decade. The Oxford thus played a pivotal role, in allowing culturally diverse youth to enter the night-time economy in a different manner from ‘mainstream’ Wollongong culture, circumnavigating what the majority of participants perceived as repressive or homogenising practices and spaces characteristic of other drinking establishments, those enmeshed within the monopolised corporate structure of Wollongong. The Oxford represented fringe culture, radical political views and confronting music and fashion, against a ‘mainstream’ defined by love of local sporting teams, ‘straight’ fashion and commercial pop music.

Nonetheless, the venue did not just provide an ‘alternative’ option within the night-time economy of Wollongong. Over the course of youth transitions the sense of community participants described within the venue and scene was catalysed, through shared significant moments in their lives. Muz remembered an instance of the venue facilitating a space during one such experience

One night will always represent the Oxford and what it has meant for me and my life … the afternoon I found out my friend Dwayne had died. I had been called that morning and had in turn, began calling those people that needed to know. Midway through the day, after talking to a few people in person and over the phone, it became evident that we needed to hang out, to be together, to share our grief. Where else would we go? The Oxford was the only place in Wollongong where we felt any sense of belonging, any sense of safety, the only place where a group of misfit, skate punk kids could just be … So, we slowly converged on the beer garden at the Oxford. It was a Sunday afternoon and the bottom end of town was quiet, the Oxford reflected this and quietly honoured our grief. So we sat until closing, occupying the entire beer garden, on the rotting wooden garden edging under the tree, with people coming and going, crying on each other’s shoulders, laughing and telling stories.

As cultural infrastructure, the Oxford provided a space in which to drink, identify with alternative youth or music sub-cultures, to feel like you belonged and to be part of a community. More than beer and loud music, it was a site of imagination, celebration, experience and grief. These narratives serve vividly to reveal the ways in which the Oxford was valued by participants—that value was a function of it being both ‘different’ and a site of belonging. Returning to Foucault’s heterotopia, these collective responses imbue the Oxford with a lineage of stories and perspectives constituting an accumulation of time—its heterotopic value accumulated through shared social experiences and practices.

Yet, this sense of permanence was at times disrupted by the fleeting experiences of the venue. A persistent narrative emerged about ‘decline’ in the venue between the past and present. Participants often narrated their involvement with the Oxford as a ‘golden’ era, as Pete (M/39) remembered

I’m privileged to have been there during what I consider to be the good years. I started going to the Oxford in 1989. Between ’89 and ’93 it was a fantastic time for music in Wollongong. Punk, ska, art, comedy, rock, blues, you name it. There was something for everyone.

Dealing with the possible distorting effect of nostalgia when collecting narratives requires consideration here, but the major point is that difference is articulated between periods and experiences of the Oxford. Indeed, it may not have been that the venue has changed so much as the people recalling their experiences of it. Understanding the convergence of temporally heterotopic transitions evident here contrasts in certain ways with assertion that alternative nightlife ‘on the margins’ must explicitly challenge corporate dominance (Chatterton and Hollands, 2003, p. 202). The Oxford, as an accumulation of time (with persistent narratives of being ‘different’ and a site of belonging), may challenge mainstream nightlife, but fleeting individual scene experiences remain highly subjective. Although intensely and regularly attending the Oxford through a key period of their lives, rarely did people continue to participate beyond their late 20s and 30s—an age barrier symptomatic of many spaces of the urban night. After ceasing to attend the venue regularly for a number of years, Karen (F/37) recalled

The crowd is different, The music is different … I don’t want to generalise too much but a lot of the times when I’ve been there, I’ve just gone ‘I either don’t like the music’ or ‘It’s too loud’.

As Karen’s participation waned, she described a scene with ‘different’ crowds and music, unpalatable to her taste. In this case, the heterotopic value of the Oxford appeared ‘temporary’, through a perception of a different ‘scene’ now inhabiting the space. A temporal reading of heterotopia allows us to examine where the sense of permanence or accumulation is disrupted by fleeting experience.

However, even with fleeting transitions out of the space, persistent meanings attributed to the Oxford remained and accumulated. As participants transitioned out of regular scene attendance, the venue remained familiar, even if the sense of community had shifted. For example, Ian recalled

I very rarely go down there now, I don’t enjoy it as much, I still feel comfortable when I walk in there, but won’t go socially like I used to … Definitely, it’s gotten a lot worse … I don’t know whether people are lazy these days and bands don’t really shake things up … but I suppose too I’m getting older, my tastes have been refined and I know what I like.

Ian was one of the few interviewees who recognised that he was the one who had changed; his tastes had ‘refined’ and, at this stage of his life, he was not as likely to visit the Oxford three or four nights a week. While it might be a cliché that the present is less appealing than the past, all participants had a relatively short horizon for participation in the music scene. Yet such transience did not automatically make the venue less significant to them. Rather, participation in this night-time space involves a distinct form of cultural expression, combining music, drinking, socialising and exploring one’s identity, characteristic of transition from youth to adulthood, and peculiar to the urban night. This is a necessarily truncated arc of participation through time. Indeed, some participants lamented this transition. When informed that the pub had gone through a tumultuous period of changing ownership and management—which hindered the ability of the scene regularly to utilise the venue—Steve (M/49) explained

I’d really like to do it again … but you see, I’m fucking 49 this year, it’s up to the young people to do it, you know?

Participants clearly articulated differences between periods of involvement with the venue and scene as transitions led them away from repetitive involvement. Participants understood their transition out of the Oxford’s scene, but still in some ways valued and felt connected to the space. Some remained familiar with the venue; some lamented their shift in participation, and others still considered the Oxford crucial for the local scene and youth. For example, reflecting on transition out of regular scene participation, Muz remembered

I had not been there for many months feeling it had lost some of its grandeur and falling into the trap of proclaiming it had ‘changed’, it wasn’t the ‘same’ and we no longer belonged there. The reality is that it is still the same old Oxford and offers the same things for its current crowd; it is still a place for those who feel they don’t belong anywhere else for whatever reason, it is still a place which has a stage used for music, has the same amount of poker machines; it is still a place … written off at closing but most of all it is still a place where on any given night something special can happen. It is me who has changed.

Even though participants’ engagement with the scene was relatively fleeting, it was a definitive period of their lives in which to belong, experience the scene, celebrate diversity and even grieve. Participants did not grow out of valuing the Oxford—they grew out of the social experience as other factors became prioritised in their lives. In some instances, former participants still valued the space as culturally relevant and important, but this also contrasted with accounts that believed the scene had changed and was not as vibrant as it was during their period of engagement. Interpreting heterotopia as both an accumulation of time and a fleeting experience allows us to theorise the significance of these spaces in the urban night, key social sites and examples of cultural infrastructure through which important lifetime transitions occur.

Discussion: The Utility of Heterotopia in Cultural Policy and Planning for the Urban Night

Following Chatterton and Hollands (2002, 2003), it is clear that urban nightscapes are increasingly subject to corporatisation and marginalisation. If we embrace a simplistic, literal reading of heterotopia, we can attempt to locate spaces ‘othered’ by this process, incompatible with mainstream urban trends. Yet how far might such an approach inform cultural policy-making or better planning for the urban night? Critics of heterotopia have suggested that the theory holds no relevance for locating the ‘real spaces’ Foucault listed in Of other spaces (Genocchio, 1995; Hetherington, 1997; Saldanha, 2008). Simply asserting that physical spaces such as the Oxford are heterotopic is unlikely to shift how they are imagined, accommodated or provisioned within the urban night. However, understanding the processes through which the space becomes imagined and experienced as different from ‘other spaces’ is more relevant—and is transferrable to other cultures, identities and infrastructures within the urban night.

As the literature on youth transitions has described (Hollands, 2002; Bennett, 2006; Davis, 2006), activities within the urban night are becoming significant sources of identity transformation, negotiated in different ways. In the example cited here, youth transitions have created not just a music scene or venue but a constant intersection of chronologically sequential ‘scenes’ and articulations of difference; over time, these have imbued the Oxford with multiple meanings. The participants’ narratives revealed how the scene and venue are conceptualised as different or other not only from ‘mainstream’ society but different from each individual’s subjective interpretation of scene-space. Certain qualities of the Oxford were persistently valued over the generational span of participants’ cumulative transitions—it was a site of imagination, celebration, experience. The venue and scene hence remained the region’s premier ‘alternative’ music venue over several decades. Yet, such a reputation did not result in the Oxford being incorporated into Wollongong’s cultural plan or Blue Mile Vision. Nor was recognition sought under heritage legislation at local, state or national level, in contrast to live music venues elsewhere. In such places, an original identity as ‘alternative’ or ‘subversive’ formed the basis of on-going cultural value, eventually leading to formal recognition as cultural heritage and, in turn, diluting oppositional qualities as those venues were absorbed into commercial nightlife strategies and even tourism campaigns (Gibson and Connell, 2007). Without recognition of the Oxford’s combination of accumulating and fleeting senses of heterotopia, its true cultural significance to the region remained unacknowledged by the city’s planning and cultural policy elite. Instead, the Oxford simply appeared as a site of ephemeral punk rebellion for a small group of rowdy young people associated instead with drinking and ‘bad’ behaviour. Hetherington (1997) argued that heterotopia remains conceptually relevant by revealing the possibilities of an alternate ordering of society. In this instance, youth transitions through cultural infrastructure in the urban night exhibit a different social ordering. The particular spatio-temporal reading of heterotopia in this case provides a means to understand, articulate and value temporal transitions, and the cultural infrastructure within which they occur.

This is relevant for debates about competitive city visions and cultural policy. Chatterton and Hollands argued that, although mainstream nightlife spaces are defining urban nightscapes they are continuously being recast and remade (Chatterton and Hollands, 2003, p. 123). Yet, the avenues through which stakeholders can influence the remaking of urban nightscapes are increasingly limited (Hae, 2011). That all participants in the Oxford’s punk music scene transitioned out of active cultural participation in the venue helps to explain its poor representation in cultural policy circles and its absence from civic visions and planned cultural precincts. Other, more visible and recognised kinds of cultural infrastructure within Wollongong, such as the local art gallery and conservatorium of music, often have life-long patronage, while Wollongong’s major entertainment centre attracts corporate sponsorship. Cultural infrastructure in urban nightscapes, such as live music venues and scenes, are hindered by a lack of lobbying power that stems from temporally heterotopic qualities. Ageing leads to other priorities in life taking precedence for music scene participants, and their departure from the scene inhibits a sense of the venue as a permanent and valued part of the urban nightscape. This, in combination with continued depiction of youth cultures as unruly or anti-social (Rogers and Coaffee, 2005) has resulted in an important form of cultural infrastructure, valued over time for its temporally specific heterotopic qualities, being overlooked and undervalued. This is also exacerbated by the manner in which ‘night’ remains positioned as an intrinsically problematic realm (Gallan and Gibson, 2011).

It remains to be seen whether a more nuanced consideration of the temporalities of heterotopia—in this case expressed through accumulating and fleeting emotional attachments to a music venue within people’s transitions from youth to adulthood—would improve the overall inclusivity of planning for the urban night-time economy. There are highly complicated issues of inclusion/exclusion at play. Yet, acknowledging how people generate emotional attachments to urban cultural spaces as ‘different’, but in temporally complex ways, remains vital to consider. Especially if diverse cultural infrastructures within the urban night are to be incorporated into a city’s broader cultural milieu in a manner more substantial than the rhetoric of ‘diversity’ and ‘vibrancy’ of existing competitive city strategies. In this instance, participants did not grow out of valuing the Oxford—they grew out of the committed social experience that characterised their previous experience of the scene and space, with other factors gradually becoming prioritised in their lives. Former participants still valued the venue as culturally relevant and important in a variety of ways—for the city, for young people, for the music scene and also for personal sentiment. Live music venues such as the Oxford can therefore also be seen as sites of accumulating time, approaching permanence (Foucault, 1986, p. 26). Such interpretations of the temporalities of heterotopia help to distinguish significant cultural spaces of the urban night from the apparent ephemerality of youth transitions. Understanding these sites as heterotopic through fleeting experience and an accumulation of time provides a tool for theorising these spaces of the urban night and interpreting their significance as examples of cultural infrastructure.