Increased interest in the Quality of Life offered by cities and other places has focussed more attention on the role played by the amenities available in high quality places. Cities that score high in terms of Quality of Life usually offer a high standard of living, supported by amenities such as cultural facilities, parks, bars and restaurants.
Dan Silver and his colleagues have long argued that the amenities provided by particular ‘scenes’ in cities can explain the distribution of different lifestyle groups. People are attracted by a lively cultural scene, where they can encounter like-minded people. These important meeting-grounds become hubs in the scene where ideas are exchanged, reputations forged and identities confirmed. Sometimes these meeting spaces are reduced to single buildings, such as the Hacienda in Manchester in the 1990s, or Studio 54 in New York in the 1970s. Patrick Adler also recently linked the growth of local music scenes to place branding, showing the potential value that scenes can have for a city.
Being part of the scene of course has costs, in terms of time (cultivating the right look, knowing which music is ‘cool’) and money investment (paying to get into the cool places and buying drinks for the right people). In the past, amenities were boosted by growth in disposable incomes as the economy grew, allowing people to spend a greater proportion of their income on leisure. Many of these people were also relatively young – the budding music lovers who didn’t have the cost of a mortgage or raising kids, and who could therefore afford to party hard.
But the development of urban economies in recent years has increased the economic cost of using these amenities significantly. The price of entering a nightclub or getting a drink has soared in recent years. Spending on amenities, just like other leisure spending, is being squeezed by rises in the general cost of living – particularly the cost of housing. The average young person in London who is renting a flat now spends 46% of their income on rent. As these fixed costs rise, so the ability of residents to support amenities declines. This is clear from the demise of many nightclubs in major cities.
Although young people are keen to keep spending on leisure activities or holidays even when their budget is tight, there is a limit to how much they can spend as rents increase, particularly in the centre of big cities.
In the future, the ability of cities to hang on to these amenities might therefore increasingly depend on people from outside the city – essentially tourists. Welcoming tourists effectively means capturing spending from elsewhere and supporting the amenity base of the city. This is illustrated by data from the Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor, which measures cultural supply and demand for 96 cities in 29 European countries. This shows a significant positive correlation between overnight stays by tourists and the number of museums in a city (0.334) concerts and shows (0.319) and the number of theatres (0.217). Without tourists, in other words, there would be less cultural supply for the residents to enjoy as well. Interestingly, there is also a positive correlation between tourist overnights and resident satisfaction with cultural facilities, which suggests that tourism not only increases the quantity of cultural amenities, but also their quality.
Cultural vibrancy rankings from the Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor, 2019
As prices rise and resident spending is squeezed still further by rising rents, the role of visitors in supporting amenities will become more important. This raises a number of interesting questions: Will cities try and improve their amenities by attracting more tourists? Will resident opposition to the nightlife economy force many cultural hangouts to close? Will scenes increasingly migrate to the urban fringe, where nighttime activities can be staged more cheaply and noise is less of an issue? Or will the new ‘places to be’ squeeze into the former office spaces vacated by remote workers?
These will be important questions for urban planners and placemakers to think about in the cities of the future.
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