Abstract

BOTTA, Giacomo  and  PETRILLI, Enrico. Nocturnal urban imaginaries: the rise and fall of Turin as a 24-hour party city. Forum Sociológico [online]. 2023, n.43, pp.57-66.  Epub Dec 22, 2023. ISSN 0872-8380.  https://doi.org/10.4000/sociologico.11869.

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.

Keywords : spatial imaginaries; post-industrial Turin night; experience.

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