If "cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night," as the English poet Rupert Brooke suggests, then how many of us should fear for our safety in the urban darkness? Is a nighttime city better measured by the numbers, rather than by such human perception and poetry?
In my view, first noted here. Brooke's poetry is a worthy start. His feline analogy creates the framework for five important qualities of 24-hour, magnetic places. The first, safety, spurs four more — mobility, proximity, commerce and interaction.
We know the positives from these qualities: legendary, all-night coding jags in the technology sector, vibrant nightlife and night markets, to name a few. All can enable more robust evening public transit service and police presence through a credible political voice lobbying for still more.
While metrics may not be necessary to frame the look and feel of a successful city at night, more formal measures might further structure inspirational images of vibrance over emptiness. Perhaps it is time for a moniker — a "lumens score" or "urban illumination index" — to add to the indicators of a 24-hour city, something characteristic of the creative metropolitan meccas called for by the vanguard of today's urbanist advocates.
