IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/urbstu/v54y2017i3p633-648.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Time, space, and the authorisation of sex premises in London and Sydney

Author

Listed:
  • Jason Prior

    (University of Technology Sydney, Australia)

  • Phil Hubbard

    (King’s College London, UK)

Abstract

While the regulation of commercial sex in the city has traditionally involved formal policing, recent shifts in many jurisdictions have seen sex premises of various kinds granted formal recognition via planning, licensing and environmental control. This means that ‘sexual entertainment venues’, ‘brothels’ and ‘sex shops’ are now not just labels applied to particular types of premises, but formal categories of legal land use. However, these categories are not clear-cut, and it is not simply the case that changes in the law instantiate a change whereby these premises are brought into being at a particular point in time. Countering the privileging of space over time that is apparent within much contemporary research on sex and the city, this paper foregrounds the varied temporalities in play here, and describes how the actions of those policy-makers, municipal bureaucrats and officers allow sex premises to variously ‘fade in’, accelerate, linger, or disappear as legal land uses within the city. We examine the implications of these different temporalities of the law by exploring how sex premises have been subject to regulation in London and Sydney, showing that the volatile, contradictory and fractured nature of legal space-making does not necessarily provide the certainty sought by the law but produces overlapping and contested understandings of what types of premises should be subject to regulation. More broadly the paper highlights how attention to the contingency and complexity of municipal law can help us better understand the ways that commercial sex is differently manifest in different cities.

Suggested Citation

  • Jason Prior & Phil Hubbard, 2017. "Time, space, and the authorisation of sex premises in London and Sydney," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(3), pages 633-648, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:54:y:2017:i:3:p:633-648
    DOI: 10.1177/0042098015612057
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098015612057
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0042098015612057?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alex Jeffrey & Michaelina Jakala, 2014. "The Hybrid Legal Geographies of a War Crimes Court," Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 104(3), pages 652-667, May.
    2. Chris Webster & Lawrence W.-C. Lai, 2003. "Property Rights, Planning and Markets," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 2625.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Claude Lacour & Sylvette Puissant, 2007. "Re-Urbanity: Urbanising the Rural and Ruralising the Urban," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 39(3), pages 728-747, March.
    2. Ernest R. Alexander, 2015. "70 Years? Planning Theory: A Post-postmodernist Perspective," SCIENZE REGIONALI, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2015(1), pages 5-18.
    3. Francesco Minora, 2013. "Collective institutions towards habitability: roles, strategies and forms of governance," Euricse Working Papers 1352, Euricse (European Research Institute on Cooperative and Social Enterprises).
    4. Lawrence W C Lai & Valerius W C Kwong, 2012. "Racial Segregation by Legislative Zoning and Company Law: An Empirical Hong Kong Study," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 39(3), pages 416-438, June.
    5. Paul A. Barter, 2015. "A parking policy typology for clearer thinking on parking reform," International Journal of Urban Sciences, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(2), pages 136-156, July.
    6. Alison Brown & Colman Msoka & Ibrahima Dankoco, 2015. "A refugee in my own country: Evictions or property rights in the urban informal economy?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 52(12), pages 2234-2249, September.
    7. Stefano Moroni, 2014. "Towards a general theory of contractual communities: neither necessarily gated, nor a form of privatization," Chapters, in: David Emanuel Andersson & Stefano Moroni (ed.), Cities and Private Planning, chapter 3, pages 38-65, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    8. Cozzolino, Stefano & Moroni, Stefano, 2021. "Multiple agents and self-organisation in complex cities: The crucial role of several property," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    9. Stefano Moroni, 2011. "Land-use Regulation for the Creative City," Chapters, in: David Emanuel Andersson & Åke E. Andersson & Charlotta Mellander (ed.), Handbook of Creative Cities, chapter 17, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    10. Shin Lee & Jong Gook Seo & Chris Webster, 2006. "The Decentralising Metropolis: Economic Diversity and Commuting in the US Suburbs," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 43(13), pages 2525-2549, December.
    11. Deborah Peel & Greg Lloyd & Alex Lord, 2007. "Business Improvement Districts and the Discourse of Contractualism," European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(3), pages 401-422, July.
    12. Jill Grant & Lindsey Mittelsteadt, 2004. "Types of Gated Communities," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 31(6), pages 913-930, December.
    13. Edwin Buitelaar, 2004. "A Transaction-cost Analysis of the Land Development Process," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 41(13), pages 2539-2553, December.
    14. Shih-Kung Lai, 2006. "A Spatial Garbage-Can Model," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 33(1), pages 141-156, February.
    15. J. Peter Clinch & Eoin O'Neill, 2010. "Assessing the Relative Merits of Development Charges and Transferable Development Rights in an Uncertain World," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 47(4), pages 891-911, April.
    16. Amir Hefetz & Mildred E Warner & Eran Vigoda-Gadot, 2012. "Privatization and Intermunicipal Contracting: The US Local Government Experience 1992–2007," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 30(4), pages 675-692, August.
    17. Deng, Feng, 2008. "What Is “Open”? An Economic Analysis of Open Institutions," MPRA Paper 8888, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Peter Gordon Sanford Ikeda, 2012. "Does Density Matter?," Working Paper 8957, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate.
    19. Elizabeth Taylor, 2014. ""Fight the towers! Or kiss your car park goodbye": How often do residents assert car parking rights in Melbourne planning appeals?," Planning Theory & Practice, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(3), pages 328-348, September.
    20. Evgeniya Bobkova & Meta Berghauser Pont & Lars Marcus, 2021. "Towards analytical typologies of plot systems: Quantitative profile of five European cities," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 48(4), pages 604-620, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:54:y:2017:i:3:p:633-648. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/urbanstudiesjournal .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.