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Good Nights: Rethinking Urban Safety, Wellbeing, and Community through Culture After Dark

It’s impossible to achieve safer cities without thinking about the night—but too often, night is under-examined in urban forums. This session, the first in WUF history to focus on the urban night, will offer a series of "lightning talks" from nighttime governance actors and cultural practitioners around the world, about alternative approaches to safer cities that emphasize wellbeing, belonging, and social cohesion.

Diana Raiselis & Juma Assiago

Moderator

date June 28, 2022 | 17:30 - 19:00 (passed)
place
Multifunction Hall Room 7
organization
VibeLab/Efus
country
Germany
language
English
theme
Equitable urban futures

Summary

It’s impossible to achieve safer cities without thinking about the night. Nighttime has a specialized set of safety and equity concerns: the needs of nighttime workers, safer nighttime mobility, equitable access to public space, and simply feeling safe in one’s own neighborhood. For a long time, cities have not considered nightlife as a priority for security of their citizens, but rather a key part of attractiveness to residents and visitors.

However, to ensure a sustainable approach to security, local authorities must recognize that cities are used differently at night than in the daytime, and require targeted policies and actions. Urban dwellers increasingly expect night-time public services and leisure activities out of office hours, seven days a week. Furthermore, during this specific time period, we observe an emergence of potential conflicts of use between the "city that sleeps," the "city that works," and the "festive city" of celebration and culture.

The night is still under-examined in urban forums, and more data and analysis is needed to better understand nighttime cities. However, nighttime is also a rich source of innovation and experimentation. Nightlife often serves as ‘safe(r) space’ for marginalized communities, or as experimentation space for creating new forms of community care. Practices and mindsets from nightlife creators can be integrated into city strategy to promote safety, social cohesion, inclusion, and all residents’ sense of belonging.

Through a series of lightning talks, followed by panel discussion and exchange between panelists and members of the Global Parliament of Mayors, this session will first define a conceptual framework for a more holistic approach to safer urban nights, showcase good practices from cities and cultural creators around the world, and finally, launch VibeLab and UN-Habitat Safer Cities' new SAFETYLAB, with clear opportunities for involvement and further engagement.

This session is co-presented by VibeLab, European Forum for Urban Security (Efus) and the Efus Women in Cities Initiative (WICI), the Global Parliament of Mayors, and UN-Habitat Safer Cities.

Objectives

This event is the first session in WUF history with a focus on urban nighttime. The session will seek to establish a shared definition and understanding of "safer nights," and then showcase examples of good practice from cities worldwide.

In addition to highlighting good-practice examples, this session asks contributors to propose potential indicators that can provide deeper insight into urban safety and security beyond traditional crime metrics. As UN-Habitat’s Urban Safety Monitor continues to evolve, these proposed metrics will feed directly into Lab activities of generating and validating new indicators for urban safety and wellbeing.

Finally, this session serves as a launch for the Safer Cities by Night initiative, and provide clear opportunities for involvement.

Session panelists

Panelist
Role
Organization
Country
Mr. Juma Assiago
Program Management Officer
UN-Habitat
Ms. Diana Raiselis
Research Lead
VibeLab
Ms. Emilija Gaidyte
Night Economy Commission Member
City of Vilnius
Mr. Mathieu Grondin
Co-Founder
MTL 24-24
Ms. Lewamm Ghebremariam
Board Member/Awareness & Diversity Department Lead
Berlin Clubcommission
Ms. Barbara Holtmann
Director, Advisor
Fixed Africa/Women in Cities Initiative (Efus)
Mr. Moritz Kuebart
Adviser, Deputy Mayor's Office
City of Mannheim
rafi
Co-Founder
TS Raver
Mr. Thierry Charlois (video)
Programme Manager for Nightlife
City of Paris
Mr. Michael Rodrigues (video)
24 Hour Economy Commissioner
New South Wales