AAA White Paper The political economy of informal events, 2030 | Page 68

4. MANAGED RIGHT, EVENTS WILL GO ON MAKING TOWNS
AND CITIES ATTRACTIVE
Britain needs more houses; but, in turn, new housing will need
amenities – including arenas for events.
Take London, where restaurants can be dearer than elsewhere. To
people moving in to new housing there, pop-up street food markets
and farmers’ markets can be an inexpensive way of trying new tastes,
without going to the formalities and bills of a restaurant.
There is no necessary contradiction between events and housing.
New York City provides perhaps the clearest example of how stalls,
launches and events based on food can help transform local areas
for the better.
As Tom Paine hints in this White Paper, tomorrow’s events could
well see more and more branded suppliers of electronic hardware
collaborate with events providers. Supermarket product suppliers,
retailers, banks and general leisure operators are likely to join in.
Together, these forces will manage sites, stages, sounds, lighting,
interactive screens, tents, canopies, decorations, street furniture,
street planting, smells, fireworks, food, beverages, and – above
all – crowds. And they’ll do that in ways that fit in with and add to
localities, and that adroitly blend the physical environment, the social
nexus, and the paraphernalia of IT: apps, devices, Augmented Reality.
It won’t all be plain sailing. With the rise of IT, popular means of
accessing music have changed, making life for music venues more
complicated. Meanwhile, property development in certain cities has
seen some clubs squeezed out from their premises.
Still, the successful events of the 2020s will no longer be just
temporary productions with little spatial impact, contoured by
the weather and light that comes with certain moments. Handled
imaginatively, events will become more of a defining fixture of
towns and cities, known as much for their lasting, constructive
effects as for their ephemeral pleasures.
Places will never be known just for being places. They will go
on being known for bull runs, horse races, human parties, and for
particular sounds, dances and gustatory delights. The towns and
cities that can reliably pull these things together, for the long term,
will do much better than the towns and cities that can’t.
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