Decoding the Multidimensional Structuring of Urban Poles of Growth of Nighttime Economics—An Inter-Discipline Study in Lanzhou City, China, Based on Geomodeling and Big Data

Abstract

The nighttime economy, or NTE—the combination of nocturnal specialties and the extension of the diurnal economy into the night—has been implemented as an effective boosting instrument set to “revitalize the urban space”. The instrument, applied in regions around world, develops new socioeconomic dynamics and poles of growth within cities. Although some cases emphasize the functional success of NTE practices, disequilibrium between urban elements—social groups, communities, and the cultures in which they live—are ongoing. The present article argues that urban nights must be considered within a broader reflection on the question of sustainability because a closer integration between brands, cultural elements, employment, and capital in different scales is demonstrated at night. Based on growth pole theory, this study combines data mining, spatial modeling, and other complementary approaches, and successfully (1) identifies the growth poles of the NTE in Lanzhou City, a postindustrial city transitioning towards a nighttime economy that forms dotted and non-uniform nocturnal zones through its geography and demography; (2) characterizes their socioeconomic organization, and (3) analyzes various causes and manifestations of the disequilibrium.

1. Nighttime Growth Poles: Emergence, Importance, Problematics, and Perspectives on Social Sustainability

Despite the advantages brought about by globalization, some cities that have lost their industrial importance demonstrate adverse reactions: Low income, unemployment, demographic loss, and declined urban centers. “The cultural use of economic revitalization” has become an “effective way to revitalizes urban centers” (Chew, 2009) that has displayed numerous successful cases by virtue of its consumptive popularity and hence market potential, and it has quickly spread across the world: it stabilizes the local dynamic of social exchanges relying on a more “resilient” (Wrigley & Brookes, 2014) [1] economic structure. From daily use to new industries, the “cultural economy” covers a wide range of lifestyles. Some cultural businesses—especially face-to-face services, such as restaurants and other ones that rely on them (public transit, lighting, etc.)—have extended their practices into the night, namely “nocturnalisation” (Koslovsky, 2011) [2], while new nocturnal businesses, such as cyber-sports and immersive art, break the silence of the night. The term “night economy” has gradually emerged in spoken dialogue in some countries, especially in Asian ones. Over decades of development, the day–night economies’ sectorial boundaries and spatio-temporal ones are becoming more blurred: part of the NTE was extended into the daytime during the post-Fordism restructuring of urban work-consumption rhythms, thus creating “diurnisation” (Gwiazdzinski, 2005) [3]. In this context, the “nighttime economy” (henceforth NTE) is defined in this article as “the lawful set of cultural offerings and consumptions occurs from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. next morning”. This definition is distinguished from the NTE in the UK—the extension of opening hours towards the night among alcoholic businesses—and from other NTEs based on special economic entities that emerge at night, e.g., “Fête des Lumières”—the tourism-based NTE—in France (Hu, 2019).

The NTE is considered one of the most important industrial sectors in many countries. In the UK, the value-added tax from the NTE amounts to approximately EUR 9.5 billion (Shaw, 2012) [4]. The NTE is also an important creator of jobs: 1.8 million jobs are provided, accounting for 8% of all jobs in the UK (Gershuny & Fisher, 2000) [5]. In China, the scale of nighttime economic development will exceed 30 trillion yuan in 2020, and an increase to 36 trillion yuan by 2021 is expected (Qian, 2021) [6]. The NTE also drives market spillover into other businesses, such as tourism and manufacturing. The nights are becoming an important tourist attraction in France (Queige, 2005; Gwiazdzinski, 2016) [7,8]. The NTE thrives in a worldwide range, with a dependence on local cultural routines and/or public interventions. In some countries, the function of the NTE has shifted from “urban revitalization” to “boosterism” because of the “cross-interests in job creating, taxes raising and social controlling” (Chew, 2009; Chen, 2020) [9,10], although there is similarity in the content of the NTE in these countries. To assess the trends of this emerging topic, different disciplines have considered it as follows: the NTE increases residents’ sense of belonging to the city (Seijas, 2014) [11]; the NTE enhances the safety of communities (Narboni, 2012) [12]. Dissenting voices are augmented as well, which intensively discuss issues such as light and noise pollution, occupational health and safety, commodity diversification, conflicts between sleepers and workers, etc., and dozens of studies are summarized in Gwiazdzinski’s (2016) article. The UK places more weight on issues rooted in its alcohol-led NTE—for example, the impact of international capital on local cultures (Hollands & Chatterton, 2003) [13], on young groups (Wilson, 2006) [14], on cultural diversity (Talbot, 2007) [15], on quality of life (Chausson, 2014) [16], on social stratification (Grazian, 2009) [17], and on antisocial behavior (Hopkins, 2016) [18].

A few researchers have noticed that the radical boosterism of the NTE produces homogenized cultural offerings or simply destroys local folk customs (Campo & Ryan, 2008) [19]. Consequentially, the source of income for the actors of “low-order cultural biz” is deprived (Gentry, 2013) [20]. The NTE is rapidly developing at varying levels in different cities; some NTE policies display unrealistic expectations, with a lack of meticulous measurement based on the reality and relativity of each of infra-urban NTE sphere. As a consequence, a number of NTE initiatives have been abandoned or failed to achieve their initial goals, and the plan of “local reactivation” places the copresence of economic expression of cultures, communities, lifestyles, and social classes within the city at risk.

From the perspective of growth pole theory, the NTE has added differently intensified, dotted, and non-uniform nocturnal functioning zones upon the original spatial networks of urban economic activities (Hu et al., 2016) [21] in the city. Such nocturnal zones are organized differently, with a centripetal force affecting local socioeconomic exchanges, considered as “nocturnal poles of economic growth” (henceforth NEPs). Each NEP in the city—the singularity of NEPs—draws upon surpluses of employment, capital, and consumption, and “processes” the abundance of cultural expression, lifestyles, and spaces. An NEP is the economic dynamism of one cultural offering in a specific area, characterized by a certain intensity of interactions between actors and consumers. An NEP is an aggregation of similar actors that tends to explore constantly the limits of interactions with its consumers. From this angle, the NTE is no longer the figures of the city’s assets in a statistical list or a specific bar or nocturnal actor, but a relative and theoretically measurable aggregate of nighttime economy entities at the infra-urban level.

The present article argues that the failure of the NTE plans may be due to the combined effect of two factors. The first is the level of convergence among the above-listed factors that determine the feasibility and the sustainability of an NEP, even if the factorial levels vary according to the characteristics of the NEP; some local NTE initiatives failed to achieve their initial goals due to ignoring such factorial convergence. Second, the differences in factorial convergence among NEPs widen their socioeconomic disparities, which leads to the failure of the coexistence among related social groups or cultural economy entities.

This article proposes a study on Lanzhou City’s NEPs—this is a post-industrial city located in Western China that has attempted to offset the socioeconomic impact of industrial transformation through NTE plans over the past 20 years, where the occurrence of inequalities at both the local and global levels is hypothesized. Additionally, the diversified cultural offerings of Lanzhou’s NTE allow observation of their internal dynamics, which is also one of the reasons that we choose to study it.

1.1. Emergence and Importance of Nighttime Economy in China

The presence of the NTE is rooted in the history of China (Ni, 2000); several millennia ago, its early emergence started with the extension of catering, the trading of tea, and post stations after sunset, which was gradually diversified with grocery selling, street performing arts, and medicines, and led to the formation of special nocturnal districts, namely “nocturnal markets” (Zhou, 2000; Zhu, 2008) [22,23]. From the 1990s to the present, the NTE has been “rapidly developed” (Farrer, 2008) [24] because of the loosening public regulations on nocturnal activities in response to the huge employment demand (Chew, 2009) [25] and the rising social classes’ strong willingness for consumption (Ba, 2019) [26]. Some nocturnal actors rent shops along the streets, regulated by the Ministry of Commerce, which are considered as a legal part of the NTE. These operators have gradually formed special functional clusters, with diversified consumptive patterns and interdependent SMEs in auxiliary industries and services targeting production chains (Porter, 1998) [27]. Other actors, especially “street stalls”, irregularly occupy public spaces and operate along roads (Huang & Xue, 2011) [28], which are deemed “informal actors” by municipal agencies. The Urban Law Enforcement and Administration Office (UALEB, 城管 in Chinese) was established in order to “maintain the planned order of the street…ensure the circulation of transport and eliminate unauthorized activities (UALEB, 2003)”, caused largely by informal actors. With such formal and informal recoveries of nocturnal markets, new NTE forms based on diverse types of culture—bars, coffee shops, bakeries, karaoke and bowling facilities, billiards, etc.—emerged as the “side effect of globalization” (Zhu, 2006) [29], especially in China’s first-tier cities. These diverse cultural economies are regulated by the Ministry of Culture of China.

Authorities responsible for cities have adopted two perspectives on the NTE. Those who believe that their cities benefit from the NTE have reduced the administrative restrictions by empowering special districts with easier entrance for nocturnal startups and investments, therefore displaying a liberal approach to the development of different forms of NTE through intense interactions with the surrounding consumption and lifestyles. Conversely, other cities are aware of the negative side effects of liberal NTE development—urban cultural spaces are gradually being “appropriated” by international culture-packed capitals, which have therefore economically “purified” local cultural entities out of the nocturnal market in pursuit of their advantages or monopolistic acquisitions—this imposes a certain degree of limitation on the basis of the type of NTE in order to preserve the NTE’s social values (Ding, 2018) [30]. Specifically, some among the latter have defined the night markets as a “carrier only for the reemployment of disadvantaged groups or the preservation of disadvantaged cultures”, namely a “social articulation point” (Yangtse news, 2020) [31]. This is especially the case for the informal sector, as it can provide employment for the vulnerable population while preserving the aboriginal culture.

Lanzhou City’s unified urban development plan formed an industrial centrality with several residential areas of high population density that were relatively distant from each other following the topographical restriction. From the 1980s, the city experienced an industrial and social transition. Under the dual pressure of the job demand from re-employment and rural–urban migrants alongside the scarcity of the NTE market, various types of NEPs emerged and were commercially developed into different scales according to the topographical and demographical specificities: Zhangye Road developed a vehicle-free promenade, a nocturnal scenic spot dominated by lighting, art, and catering; Maijishan Road became a living nocturnal entity enriched with bars, performing arts, and catering; Yongchang Road became a small commodity distribution area, etc. During the development period, the competition among NEPs in Lanzhou has become increasingly fierce. NEPs are becoming increasingly unstable due to various reasons. Policies are often unable to smoothen the functional transitions of NEPs in the face of the changing demands of populations, spaces, and cultures. All these factors position the city as an appropriate field of study.

1.2. From Uncontrollable Spatial Process of NEPs to Unsustainable NTE

The development of the NTE involves an uneven spatial process, similar to that of the diurnal growth pole. The concept of the growth pole was first proposed by French economist François Perroux. It evolved into a geospatial term with other researchers (Boudeville, 1966; Gore, 1984) [32,33]; the growth pole refers to the geographically non-uniform industrial clusters with different intensities. Among the clusters, dominant and game-changing ones are more likely to generate centripetal force towards labor, capital, and technology, thereby gradually contributing to centers of growth, which boosts the entire regional economy through the production chain. However, the classical theories of the growth pole explain urban development in an abstract and ideal world (Parr, 1999) [34], and it has lost its original meaning and intellectual rigor (Gavrilă-Paven & Bele, 2017) [35] in transforming from a theoretical idea to a practical instrument. The critics have pointed out that “rather than being a model or theory to be rigorously tested and evaluated, the cluster idea has instead become accepted largely on faith as a valid and meaningful ‘way of thinking’ about the national economy” (Martin & Sunley, 2003) [36]. As a consequence, the classical growth pole theories place less emphasis on the internal dynamics of clusters (Gordon & McCann, 2000) [37], and are unable to interpret and propose policy solutions that originate primarily from the potential of local development, innovation, and entrepreneurship (Vlados, 2019) [38]. Such defects in the theories affect the “social sustainability of the local economic ecosystem”—the relatively stable dynamics of the job market, income status, and economic diversity in the long and short term (in the sense of Roberts & Gornostaeva, 2007) [39]. Because it produced high randomness in the diffusion effect, it hinders the development of other regions, reduces the ability to provide employment in a greater area, and causes the coexistence to fail, marked by a widening gap in economic development between social groups and regions.

The internal dynamics of NEPs are characterized by this uneven spatial process. The lack of awareness of this uneven spatial process is the main reason for the coexistence failure of NEPs. The failure of practiced or ongoing NTE projects in different cities and countries is observed under the intuitive perception of the result of such coexistence failure, rather than the process itself. NEPs exert uneven impacts upon jobs, capital, social strata, and cultural elements. The long- and short-term viability of an NEP depends on the appropriate proportion in which these factors are organized—the number of actors or consumers, costs, spatial configurations, etc., because the “relative surplus” (Hu, 2019) of any factors will cause the systemic instability of the NEP. The internal dynamics of the NTE depend on the spatial logic of consumption; the NTE’s sustainability depends therefore on the coupling of consumptive spheres to marketplaces (ibid.). This is not the case for diurnal growth poles that are more reliant on the production chain and are cost-conscious. Acknowledging this point, large organizations, especially international ones, have developed their multiplex shops and entertainment centers by buying nearby small independent businesses such as restaurants, rather than simply investing in a single cinema that is already profitable. In this way, the “geographical overflow” (Muhlenbach, 2003) [40] of profits is controlled within a marketplace; hence, the capital is obtained through the “purification” of independent competitors in the area. As a consequence, small autochthonic businesses are progressively destroyed by such capital, intended for the use of more affluent residents and replaced by fast food and chain stores, even if the use of these chain stores may initially contribute to the patronage of establishments in the area (Wei, 2004; Ren, 2008; Campo & Ryan, 2008) [41,42]. Accumulating over time, the disparity in the social strata linked to each economy in the cultural sphere increases, and it is normally accompanied by geographic fragmentation between them (Zhou, 2013, Hu, 2019) [43]. As a consequence, there is a loss of value of urban public spaces with the intensifying gentrification of international brands (Pratt, 2017) [44]. However, for various reasons, public interventions are rarely effective in “managing” such uneven spatial processes—not only that of the night, but also that of the day.

Delicate instruments are required to study the internal dynamics of NEPs and hence to reduce the “uncertainty” (Veltz, 1996) [45] of the NTE and enhance the socioeconomic sustainability of NEPs.

Identifying and analyzing the socioeconomic composition of NEPs can help us to better understand the internal dynamics of NEPs. This understanding would allow us to create policy interventions (Radeva & Naneva, 2007) [46] that manage the “relative surplus” of NEPs and distribute more efficiently the human and capital resources (based on Krugman, 1991; Novikova & Leontiev, 2021) [47,48]; therefore, a sustainable NTE can be achieved at both a local and intra-regional level.

However, previous growth pole studies lacked the necessary techniques to collect relevant information and build analytical models to study the internal dynamics. Therefore, the present study adopted a multidisciplinary approach—using data mining and geographic modeling—to conduct measurable growth pole modeling, as described in Section 2. The NTE data processed by this model are used for the “relative surplus” analysis, shown in Section 3. In the same section, the connections between such relative surplus and the sustainability of the NTE—the coexistence of populations, spaces, and cultures—is discussed at various levels.

2. Methods of the Research

The study adopted an interdisciplinary method, carried out as follows: (1) we collected information on nocturnal activities in Lanzhou City from social networks; (2) we identified NEPs by GIS and characterized them; (3) we analyzed the socioeconomic structure of serval representative NEPs in connection with their multi-factorial organization; (4) we compared NEPs and investigated their relativistic value in economic, social, and cultural terms (Figure 1).

2.1. Collection of Information on Nocturnal Activities from Social Networks in Lanzhou

Using data mining, we successfully extracted information about four types (

Table 1. Grid of keywords used for data mining.

Category	Keyword Subset
Gastronomy	Restaurant, specialty, pastry, drink (alcoholic or not)
Entertainment	Karaoke, dance, cyber games, board games, theatre, cinema, opera, crosstalk show, study workshops, training (accounting, art, cooking...), events, concerts, exhibitions
Shopping	Markets, retailers, vending machines, sales, buy, consume
Sport	Basketball, tennis, swimming, gym, fit, training, instruments, bicycles, competitions, billiards, workout

Source: Authors.

) of NTE in Lanzhou from a social network—Dianping—a website similar to TripAdvisor in which the actors self-promote by posting their products and prices, and consumers post voluntarily and freely describe their consumption with text and images that detail their expenditures and feelings. The actors are already categorized by the website operator; therefore, the information about the actors related to the keyword subset (Table 1) could be easily extracted thanks to the algorithm, which automatically structured the data table (Gwiazdzinski, Hu & Li, 2019) [49] according to the data fit to the following analysis. Using another algorithm, namely modified SnowNLP (PyPI, 2015) [50], the positive consumption from all related consumers’ posts was filtered out.

2.2. Identifying and Characterizing NEPs in Lanzhou

We input the filtered and structuralized data into a vector map in GIS, thus depicting, respectively, the spatial distribution of four types of actors and that of related consumers. Processing the vector map, we obtained the following spatial characteristics of NEPs in Lanzhou: (1) the total number of individuals, including the number of actors and related consumers, relative to an NEP; (2) the intensity of spatial concentration of the individuals; (3) the gradient of density from the center to the edge of an NEP. To facilitate the multidimensional analysis of NEPs and the comparison between NEPs, we integrated these spatial characteristics with the following data into the same table: (4) the average expenditure per consumer of an NEP; (5) the repetition of one consumer’s interaction with the offers of an NEP in a year; (6) the rent in different areas in Lanzhou, extracted from the websites of real estate agents.

2.3. Analysis and Composition of NEPs in Lanzhou

On the basis of the above-mentioned factors, we built models that analyzed the differently organized NEPs in the locations of distinguished socioeconomic representations. Lastly, the study compared these organizations of NEPs and explored the relative (dis-)advantages between them, thereby considering the problems and potential with the help of the results of previous sociological and economic studies. Some supplementary methods (on-site inspections and interviews, reading and collation of local public materials) were also applied.

3. Uneven Spatial Process, Socioeconomic Disparities, and Coexistence of Nighttime Growth Poles

The approach was successfully used to collect information on 65,994 nocturnal behaviors (6547 actors, 59,447 consumers) between 1 January 2016 and 31 December in Lanzhou, which made it possible to identify NEPs and to analyze their socioeconomic structures. By categorizing NEPs into four types—commercially organized NEPs, self-organized NEPs, quasi-poles, and NEPs of special projects—we compared the spatial and socioeconomic structures, discussed the linkages between their uneven spatial processes and socioeconomic disparities, and proposed a solution to improve the coexistence of NEPs.

3.1. Comparison of NEPs’ Spatial Structures

(a)

Commercially organized NEPs

Only three commercially organized NEPs were identified—Xiguan, Central Square, and Wanda Center (red rings in Figure 2)—which were densely populated areas that increased the likelihood of consumption. They were three kilometers apart from one another, because the proximity creates an overlap in their area of influence and congestion, hence avoiding the loss of marginal profits (Anas & Pines, 1998) [51]. Commercially organized NEPs have the most intense land use among all types of NEPs—with large buildings containing concentrated, densely organized rooms for various types of offerings, with high rent costs. With such scarce offerings/prices, commercially organized NEPs expand their area of influence even as an enclave from afar: both the scarcity and reduced friction of commuting boost the purchase intention from the far edge of the NEPs’ area of influence. In the case of Wanda Plaza, the two are used as alternatives. The Wanda Center, established in a sparsely populated suburb, reinforced its area of influence with a low price strategy thanks to the low rent in the area. As living conditions have developed, the vicinity of Wanda Plaza has become more populated, and Wanda Plaza’s area of influence has been reduced with the increasing price of its offerings. In many Chinese cities, the formation of major NTE areas displays a similar process (Fan, 2021) [52].

(b)

Self-organized NEPs

There is a larger number of self-organized NEPs (blue rings in Figure 2), mainly distributed near densely populated areas or around nodes of public transit. Each self-organized NEP is the result of surviving actors in the changing consumptive environment: actors “metabolize” quickly, while the factors such as the spatial configuration, products, and the price of the NEP evolve. Some self-organized NEPs are located in historical urban areas where the land uses are less intense because of the high demolition cost, which hinders the investment of commercially organized NEPs; others have emerged in newly built areas of high-intensity land use. Self-organized NEPs are characterized by the agglomeration of a large number of similar actors. The fierce competition and speedy “metabolism” have ensured the vitality and adaptability of NEPs; the uncertainty of the actors plays the role of a resilience creator among self-organized NEPs. Compared to a commercially organized NEP, a self-organized NEP attracts a smaller area of influence of consumers (see the slope of the density and its attenuation curve in Figure 3), and one reason for this is its weaker accessibility by public transit and inefficient land use (hence higher operational costs).

(c)

Quasi-poles

Quasi-poles are located generally around residential areas; they are named quasi because of their lowest density of actors within the smallest range among all types of NEPs (Figure 4). A large number of quasi-poles are densely distributed in residential areas; each has a few actors with daily needs, without competition except for restaurants. The distance between similar actors seems to be an effective strategy to avoid customer turnover, but restaurants rely more on their own uniqueness. Compared to other types of NEPs, almost all quasi-poles share a small but more even number of consumers that are located 10 to 15 min on foot from actors (Figure 3). The quasi-poles’ spatial configuration is relatively primitive: a loose network of products or services and related distributors, which affects, and is affected by, the creation and delivery of an actor; “like an individual species in a biological ecosystem, each operator ultimately shares the fate of the quasi-pole, regardless of that one’s apparent strength” (Based on Iansiti & Levien, 2004) [53].

(d)

NEPs of special projects

NEPs of special projects are built by the public sector, and they are committed to a particular function, to revitalize urban areas or to articulate social groups (Chine magazine, 2021) [54], for instance. This type of NEP is normally characterized by specific industries, such as the Gannan Road Bar Street (blue ring in Figure 2)—a zone for bars, performing arts, and the nascent industries under explosive growth as a result of tax incentives and the loose business registration restrictions of the industries within the areas, which rapidly led to unemployment. For the unemployed, they are financially and technically less able to enter areas such as Gannan Road and Yongchang Road—an area where roadside stalls gathered spontaneously become the channel for their self-reemployment. Choosing between the socioeconomic integration needs of this difficult population and the chaos (congestion, noise, and waste) created by them, the attitude of the public sector towards such NEPs swings between prohibition and permission. Now, Yongchang Road gives the green light to self-reemployment, namely, the “social articulation point”. Whether on Gannan Road or Yongchang Road, similar offers are widely repeated, although the lack of skills is the main cause of the latter.

(e)

Uneven spatial process of NEPs and disparities

In Figure 5, the curves of NEPs’ three indicators—registered capital, number of actors, and number of consumers—do not fit well with one another within the four types of NTEs. A large number of actors are concentrated within self-organized NEPs (blue curves), being larger within quasi-poles, especially the gastronomy sector, with lower barriers to employment. The actor–consumer ratio presents also a relative excess of actors among poorly organized NEPs, especially self-organized NEPs, NEPs of special projects, and NEPs with poor market locations (Figure 3). However, it should be noted that the disparity between groups develops more slowly, and narrower curves are shown between the NEPs of the groups, but this does not mean that the NEPs are necessarily the same (in terms of area, number of actors, etc.). The three curves converge in different ways between the four types of NEPs, which reveals a disparity in income, which is linked naturally to the problem of social polarization and spatial segregation (Ionu et al., 2021) [55]—the relative surplus of employment, especially in quasi-poles, gives rise to low wages, invisible unemployment, etc. When the difference in curves’ convergence diminishes between different types of NEPs, the marginal efficiency of social resources is not significantly affected by the mobility of price, consumption, or spatial configuration (based on Krugman, 1991). NEPs practice more or less “equal” structural growth whereby one NEP absorbs the “surplus of actors” from another NEP. The increased productivity of NEPs will create a new systemic demand for employment (based on Ranis, 2004) [56]. However, it should be noted that such “polycentric” development will reduce the profit margin of space use (Anas & Pines, 1998).

3.2. Comparison of NEPs’ Socioeconomic Structures

(a)

Economic structures of different types of NEPs

Commercially organized NEPs are usually characterized by well-known brands and luxury services/products (high-end restaurants, beauty salons, etc.; see Figure 6). Such actors coexist by complementing each other: they act in a symbiotic relationship (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2013) [57] that combines their individual offerings into a coherent, customer-facing solution, which fulfils the consumer’s consumptive desires within their hierarchy of need—personality, identification, etc. Under this effect, commercially organized NEPs have drastically reduced the marketing costs of coordination and adaptations (based on Adner, 2006) [58]. In turn, these internationally chained or funded NEPs represent the most important centers of Lanzhou, with the highest consumption on average (CNY 210–872), where the area’s local or native cultural offerings are almost stamped out. Particularly worrying is the lack of policymakers’ response to this type of so-called “gentrification” in Lanzhou. More importantly, similar situations have appeared in other cities, such as Beijing (Zeng, 2008) or London (Pratt, 2017).

Many national brands are concentrated within self-organized NEPs, especially competitive local brands and SMEs of high domestic market value. Such SMEs generally organize a more flexible “ecosystem” with different types of actors—such as stakeholders and real estate agents—and they strategically compete in the buyer’s market. In other words, self-organized NEPs are shaped by rapid interactions between actors and consumers, who co-evolve their capabilities and roles based on the consumption characteristics of each NEP or potential location. The transparency of information between these SMEs is lower (Wei, 2006) [59] and there is a lack of top-down executive force. Thus, actors tend to align themselves (based on Moore, 2006) [60] with the directions set by one or a few successful actors, which reduces the cost of trial and error from marketing attempts. In self-organized NEPs, the minimum and maximum amounts of expenses present a large margin, but they are mainly concentrated around the medium interval (60–260 yuan). Rarely, international brands are located within the self-organized NEPs, except for the occurrence of important consumption rates around such NEPs.

In quasi-poles, the actors mainly target the daily needs of nearby communities, especially industries with lax entry barriers, such as restaurants, pastry shops, grocery stores, lounges, and convenience stores, characterized by “small sizes, low expenses (CNY 20–80) and vernacular business”. In Dazhong Road, a few restaurants were able to expand as a result of their uniqueness in terms of products that attracted more customers within the limited total demands in the influence area of the NEP. As a consequence, the operating expenses of other restaurants in the NEP were raised due to a lack of business, and they were gradually replaced by other types of offerings (bars, leisure, beauty services, billiards, games and massage rooms). Dazhong Road—an ”area for restaurants” in the past—has evolved to form a more complex cluster of shopping, entertainment, and catering services. As the influence area expands, the restaurants on the edge of the Dazhong Road NEP disappear. This is not the case in other quasi-poles, in which the uniqueness in the products of actors produces insufficient attractiveness to customers. Therefore, the actors were required to passively distance themselves from others so as to reduce the number of similar actors in the influence area, and the distance is directly proportional to the consumption capacity of the area: the density of actors increases in areas with larger consumption capacity. This is the self-organizing mechanism by which actors overcome the relative surplus, so as to avoid the problem of bargaining wages—an amount of individual income in the area that only covers the minimal survival conditions of an actor, being, however, below the average level of the city. This can also be understood as a form of “disguised unemployment”.

NEPs of special projects do not comply smoothly with the curve fitting due to the special policing orientation. Both Yongchang Road and Gannan Road contain an excess of actors. Interestingly, markets have reshaped their spatial structures. The overflowing of bars has now been reduced by the limited market, and the original NEP of Gannan Road is now split into two smaller centers appearing at both ends of the street; each has gathered several bars, with more bars on the western side due to the proximity to the dense center. The same spatial division occurred in Yongchang Road; the convergence of the economic curves is accomplished through spatial reconfiguration. The boosterism of the NTE that generated the heavy concentration of actors may be an efficient means to mobilize venture funds but it is absolutely not a sustainable way to articulate social groups or to activate places.

(b)

Social structures of different types of NEPs

The quantity, brands, diversity, and location of the product/service are all aspects of commercially organized NEPs that are ordered and stem from the establishment of “three hierarchies”. Firstly, according to the experience of real estate operators, expensive goods for female consumers are arranged in the most conspicuous and accessible locations; contrarily, the highest/farthest floors are designated for restaurants, entertainment facilities, or small brands. Secondly, the repetition rates of consumption per person in commercially organized NEPs are the lowest: most of the offers are more expensive goods for occasional consumption, but a small number of cheap offers will help to attract potential consumers. In other words, passing through the first floor (luxuries) is the only way to access the last one (cheaper goods); hence, the spatial organization of offerings ensures the generation of temptation. Thirdly, despite the significant turnover relative to other types of NEPs, commercially organized NEPs provide an average salary of approximately 5000 yuan per month to their employees at the end of the hierarchy (interviews in field, 2019).

Microscopically, actors in a self-organized NEP independently risk the market and gain from the capacity of self-adaption in the changing market—if not, they will simply be eliminated from the NEP. The distribution of income among actors is very uneven, although some of them are accompanied by higher personal salaries (around 20,000 yuan), which depends considerably on the differences in the market capabilities of actors. Employees are also more driven by sales dividends. Macroscopically, this collectiveness built upon individual free actions shows that self-organized NEPs are more in line with the expectations of the “struggling class” with certain resource advantages. Hence, more jobs are absorbed by self-organized NEPs. However, actors in self-organized NEPs mainly undertake middle-level consumption due to their relative disadvantage in popularity, macro market experience, information, and skills. Self-organized NEPs are a type of “collective intelligence” (Levy, 1997) [61] that is organized by the randomness and the continuous trial and error of independent SMEs.

Offerings in quasi-poles are mainly run by family actors. Quasi-poles are also an important element that absorbs occupations, especially those of lower skill thresholds—restaurants and groceries—as the main components of everyday life and the proximity economy that is characterized by repetitive interactions between a few actors and consumers in each of the quasi-poles. Mostly, actors in quasi-poles tend not to develop a shared vision of the future of the cluster, thereby lacking some form of management implemented within it, which is one of the main reasons that actors choose locations to avoid competition with others at a close distance. Rarely, quasi-poles naturally evolve into clusters, because both the actors themselves and local public interventions place less importance on human resources and on strengthening the pool of skilled knowledge workers in such a “system D”, thereby resulting in the reduced likelihood of an individual becoming an entrepreneur. Hence, quasi-poles and related social groups are vulnerable to becoming economically and/or geographically marginalized by more organized external cultural-economy-imposed gentrification.

Originally permitting the spontaneous gathering of marginalized social groups, the Night Market in Yongchang Road was later legalized, although through a very challenging process. However, in the field interview (2021), we found that there was a lack of necessary public interventions during the development of Yongchang Road, with some “white-collar workers” progressively infiltrating the area to “gain an extra wage” after their daytime work. As a result, the prices rose as the products varied, which eventually led to the exclusion of marginalized groups due to their weak competitivity. Thus, while it became economically successful, the original social significance—to help the marginalized population—was overturned in Yongchang Road. In other cities, the public sector reacted to this social articulation in similar areas: by the screening of actors upon entry and reserving areas of special policy to focus on lower social groups, while maintaining the social viability of the local culture in the area (Gulou District Urban Management Bureau, 2020) [62]. However, on Yongchang Road, the public sector has not taken similar measures so far.

4. Conclusions

This study investigated the multi-factorial structuration of Lanzhou’s nighttime economy (NTE): (1) it identified the areas with the highest density of different types of cultural consumption at the infra-urban level, namely nighttime economy growth poles (NEPs); (2) it characterized the multi-factorial composition of NEPs; (3) it categorized four types of NEPs that function differently in the organization of economic performance, the creation of employment, and the formation of the local cultural sphere; (4) it analyzed the problematic sustainability of Lanzhou’s NTE practices, highlighting the “relative surplus” in NEPs in various levels caused by socioeconomic inequality among urban spaces, social strata, and (sub-)cultures.

Combining models of growth poles and big data, this paper provides an effective method to analyze the organizational details of an NEP and to compare the organizational differences among NEPs. The method offers an opportunity to restore the process of the multi-factorial composition of NEPs, therefore revealing its internal dynamics.

This new method helps to obtain the short- and long-term sustainability of urban entities based on a posteriori analysis, because it allows a reduction in the redundancy of socioeconomic resources by managing the convergence of NEPs’ compositional factors. The public policies formed through this model can be used to govern the geographic marginalization, especially that of fragile cultural or social entities, as well as rent discriminations, fragmentation, and social mobility among the most vulnerable. The method can also be applied to the management of broader urban entities, such as the diurnal growth poles.

Compared to previous studies on the NTE that extensively discuss light and noise pollution, occupational health, safety, social stratification, commodity diversification, conflicts between sleepers and workers, etc., the novelty of the study lies not only in the innovation of the analysis model, but also in the new research perspective. The study focused on the socioeconomic utility of the nighttime economy (NTE) based on an urbanism perspective, and thus contributes to the “socio-economic integration” (Jia, 2021) [63] of social strata and cultural diversity preservation, so as to narrow the economic disparities, to increase employment, and to reinforce cultural diversity.

5. Limits

Regarding the definition of the NTE in this study, it does not cover all negative objects, such as aggressive behavior, drug abuse (Grazian, 2009; Farrer, 2011), and other illegal activities. The study also did not discuss antisocial behavior, especially that associated with heavy drinking—in the NTE, particularly that of the UK, the culture of alcoholism has been exacerbated by extending the hours (Hobbs et al., 2003) [64] of “drink factories and peripherals” (Blair, 2004) [65], although it was initially intended to regenerate the cultural (Comedia, 1991) [66] and economic (ODPM, 2003) [67] dynamics in declining or declined urban centers.

Using the data mined from Dianping, this paper developed a new analytical model of growth poles based on the real locations of socioeconomic behaviors. However, these data have some shortcomings: the average accuracy of the algorithm is 94.7%, and more than 80% of Dianping users are aged between 18 and 35. Compared with the industrial application of data mining, its use in urban management relies less heavily on the high accuracy of the algorithm. However, these shortcomings make the method inefficient in terms of analytical capability in some cases, such as the study of the elderly population.

Besides the limitations of the social-network-explored data, the effects of environmental factors and psychological factors on the long–short-term development of poles are not considered, especially when these factors relate to the innovation and capital cycles of the pole: appropriate competition is conducive to stimulating destructive creation, and the surplus of factors increases competition among actors within poles; however, the study did not identify the mutual sensitivity between the two. Furthermore, the relations between diurnal poles of growth and nocturnal ones are also not considered in the article. These limitations represent future directions to be considered by scholars of all disciplines.