RESOURCES: Review - The struggle to avoid a homogenised night out

I heard author Rob Hollands give a brilliant paper on the research that is reported in this book at a conference in Australia, and the book certainly matched the appeal of that presentation. It is a book of two parts. First, it considers how nightlife has become standardised and segmented. Corporate entertainment operators provide "branded, themed and stylised" experiences for young adults pursuing a night out. Urban nightscapes explores the ownership and control of these leisure spaces and how, through mergers and acquisitions and the pervasive use of surveillance, historical and alternative independent forms of enjoyment have been diminished. Second, it considers how different groups of young adults have responded to such developments, through both engagement and resistance. It is a study based significantly, but by no means exclusively, on Newcastle, and the authors describe the "Otley run" between students' halls of residence and the main university campus - 15 pubs in all. This has been immortalised in a board game in which all the pubs have to be visited by closing time. The authors also look at the use of leisure provision by women and gay consumers, and excluded youth groups, some of whom still seek to construct alternative nightlife activity, such as squats and free parties.