Planning, urban design and the night-time city: Still at the margins?

The planning system was constrained by a neo-liberalist insistence on land-use planning in the 1980s and early 1990s, thereby providing the institutional framework for deregulation of the numbers, capacities and types of licensed premises in town and city centres. This had a direct impact on levels of crime, violence and anti-social behaviour. Criminologists have criticized planners for their complicity in this process. The article argues that entertainment uses have been marginal to the social and ecological preoccupations of the planning profession. It suggests that the reintroduction of spatial planning by the New Labour government has allowed planners to reassert social and environmental objectives into their development plans and potentially to introduce a greater degree of regulatory control. The article examines the changes to the planning system and its complex relation to licensing. Finally, it questions whether this new opportunity for planners to intervene will be realized in the current economic downturn.