Amsterdam’s Night Mayor Is Coming To Sydney To Show Mike Baird How To Run A City
24-hour licences? Egad!
With night-time traffic in Kings Cross and the CBD plummeting, a host of iconic late-night venues forced to close their doors and even police beginning to rethink their support of the lockout laws, Mike Baird’s bold plan to turn the nightlife of one of the world’s great cities into a mid-afternoon bowls tournament has gone down like a lead balloon with the people most affected by the changes.
As the 2nd highest charting independent artist in Australia, I’d like to take this opportunity to say, “Fuck you @mikebairdMP.”
— Brendan Maclean (@macleanbrendan) July 8, 2016
Opponents of the lockouts have long pointed to overseas examples as evidence Sydney can curb late-night violence without shutting the city down. Cities like Zurich, Paris, Toulouse and Cali in Colombia have all appointed ‘night mayors’ — administrators to oversee the management of a city’s night-time economy and balance the needs of businesses, partygoers, residents, law enforcement and government.
Cities like London and Berlin are considering introducing night mayors of their own, but the idea originally comes from Amsterdam, where former club promoter Mirik Milan was appointed the world’s first night mayor in 2014. Milan has overseen and promoted the introduction of 24-hour districts and licences, relaxed opening times for venues and inner city businesses, temporary pedestrian-only areas for music festivals and the repurposing of derelict buildings for the 24-hour economy — ideas that are a world away from 3am in a Sydney club when the lights come on and everyone gets shoved on to the street to compete for taxis with hordes of angry yobs.
Now Milan is bringing his ideas to Sydney as part of 2016’s Electronic Music Conference later this year. It should be interesting to see how someone like Milan, who oversees the smooth operation of an entire city’s night-time economy, appreciates the giant flashing signs on CBD street corners telling people they can’t get into bars after 1:30am. Maybe he can take Mike Baird out, show him a good time.
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