However, despite this growing interest, urban nights are still considered as a time to regulate, conflicts being the core of the topic. Implicitly, reflecting on nights to include them in the general reflection on the development of cities appears truly difficult. To get over this conflict and consider nights from a new perspective, we propose to change attitudes and consider nights through quality of life.
The latter aims to link the characteristics of the living environment with the needs and desires of the inhabitants. Therefore, we propose to place people at the heart of the research, questioning them about what structures their lives at night.
Through this method, we expect to build an essential knowledge to consider nights as designed by and in favor of quality of life. However, for more than a decade, things have changed. This life times and city times reorganization participates in enlivening the nights of our cities. Activities colonize this peculiar time of the city, which turns into a new time of work and leisure for an increasing number of individuals Gwiazdzinski , In this context, competition between cities is increasing and it forces them to develop true differentiation strategies to strengthen their influence and attractiveness to draw wealth and people.
Among the new tools raised by territories to adopt a unique urban identity, nightlife vitality is getting more and more central. It is part of what John Hannigan called Fantasy city in which the city spaces are thought and designed to meet a social demand, particularly regarding consumption, leisure, culture and entertainment Hannigan More recently, Paris, Toulouse and Nantes elected their unofficial night mayor, following the example of Amsterdam, to start talks with local authorities, for nights to get equal recognition in city planning.
Our research starts from the core assumption that conflict is the fundamental characteristic of the urban night, making it is necessary to regulate and pacify to create the right living together conditions in urban areas. In order to step out of conflict, it seems necessary to consider nights differently and consider them from a more constructive point of view. To make this change, we propose to analyze nights through the concept of quality of life assuming that conflicts at night express conflicts between different aspirations and needs, in other words, different representations of quality of life.
