Cafe culture and the city: The role of pavement cafes in urban public social life
Titel:
Cafe culture and the city: The role of pavement cafes in urban public social life
Auteur:
Montgomery, John
Verschenen in:
Journal of urban design
Paginering:
Jaargang 2 (1997) nr. 1 pagina's 83-102
Jaar:
1997-02
Inhoud:
This article explores the relationship between pavement cafes, street life and urban public social life. It argues that the licensing of public entertainment and the enforcement of liquor licences and rigid opening times have helped to undermine public social life in English cities. Attitudes which first gained ascendancy in the 1890s have remained dominant and, broadly speaking, unchanged. Nevertheless, there has been a recent and fairly rapid growth in wine bars, cafes and bistros in London and some other English cities. The paper explores whether these help to stimulate public social life. Reference is made to research in Holland and Denmark, and also recent experience in London and Manchester. The paper concludes that city policy makers should, in the short term at least, act to stimulate cafe culture. Some anti-social and behavioural problems might well require an element of control, and not all urban areas are suited to cafe culture. Yet in a technological age, cafe culture represents one of the few remaining opportunities for public sociability. Where it creates a nuisance, it could and should be controlled but this is not the same thing as exercising an all-persuasive moral control which has its roots in Victorian England.
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