We argue that legal geography’s ability to produce holistic knowledge about law and legal relations is hampered by the qualified dominance in the field of what we refer to as a contingency orientation. This phrase refers to both the belief that law, legal relations, and legal outcomes are more open and contingent than they appear to be, and to an empirical interest in bringing to light moments when law, legal relations, and legal outcomes appear to depart from dominant representations of these as closed, determinate, aspatial, and wholly formal. Because holistic accounts of the social world require attention to both agency and structure, both contingency and determination, we call for a stream of scholarship within legal geography the purpose of which is to give more explicit and concerted attention to structure and determination than there has heretofore been in the field, and to produce research-based theoretical knowledge that can thus improve the holism of our collective understanding of the law.
In recent years, nightlife has been increasingly recognised as an important resource for the enhancement of the post-industrial profile of the city and for the promotion of gentrification in derelict neighbourhoods. It projects an image of a vibrant social and cultural life, considered particularly appealing to the young professional labour force of post-industrial sectors, the members of whom are particularly apt to consider moving to the city. However, the advocates of this 'nightlife fix' thesis ignore tensions that have emerged between residents in gentrifying neighbourhoods and nightlife businesses due to the nuisance effects of the latter. Using the example of New York City, this paper examines how conflicts over nightlife in gentrifying neighbourhoods have resulted in the gentrification of nightlife and have thus transformed the nature of the city's nightlife itself. as being responsible for the 'hipification' of the neighbourhood, a process that has brought with itself condominium apartments and boutiques for new residents, known often as 'yuppies' . By helping to create a hipster 'vibe' through the encouragement of nightlife businesses, Misrahi had created fertile ground for gentrification in a neighbourhood that had not yet attracted the attentions of real estate developers.
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