New Cities/New Soviets

October 20, 2004

All-Night City

Sad as it is, the city that never sleeps is a shadow of it's former self. The great all-night institutions of days past -- the automats, all-night diners, etc. have gone the way of the dodo. Why? It's simple -- no factory jobs = no shiftwork = no all-nighters.

You might think that the service economy's "anything for a price" philosophy would tend to offer round-the-clock services, but this is true only for luxury services (which represent a small proportion of even the urban jobscape) and marginal businesses, where employees can be had for virtually nothing (the 24-hour Chinese restaurant is a classic of this type).

In fact, the service economy tends towards a restriction of hours to those of maximum business. All-night City R.I.P.?

Posted by Sam at October 20, 2004 09:59 AM

nice fact
death of the nite shift
wonder what a gods eye
time series
at ten year intervals
from 1800 to 2000
showing the % of awakes
over the 24 hour cycle
would look like

up up up up up up down down etc
when did the city begin to sync back up ?

Posted by: beat loaf at October 20, 2004 09:05 PM

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