Noxious Neighbours? Interrogating the Impacts of Sex Premises in Residential Areas

Phil Hubbard, Spike Boydell, Penny Crofts, Jason Prior and Glen Searle
Additional contact information
Phil Hubbard: SSPSSR, University of Kent, Chatham Maritime, Kent ME4 4AG, England
Spike Boydell: School of the Built Environment, University of Technology Sydney, PO Box 123, NSW 2007, Australia
Penny Crofts: Faculty of Law, University of Technology Sydney, PO Box 123, NSW 2007, Australia
Jason Prior: Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney, PO Box 123, NSW 2007, Australia
Glen Searle: School of Geography and Planning, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Qld 4072, Australia

Environment and Planning A, 2013, vol. 45, issue 1, 126-141

Abstract: Premises associated with commercial sex—including brothels, striptease clubs, sex cinemas, and sex shops—have increasingly been accepted as legitimate land uses, albeit ones whose location needs to be controlled because of assumed ‘negative externalities’. However, the planning and licensing regulations excluding such premises from areas of residential land use are often predicated on assumptions of nuisance that have not been empirically substantiated. Accordingly, this paper reports on a survey of those living close to sex industry premises in New South Wales, Australia. The results suggest that although some residents have strong moral objections to sex premises, in general residents note few negative impacts on local amenity or quality of life, with distance from a premise being a poor predictor of residents' experiences of nuisance. These findings are considered in relation to the literatures on sexuality and space given regulation which ultimately appears to reproduce heteronormative moralities rather than respond to genuine environmental nuisances.

Keywords: planning; neighbourhood; morality; heteronormativity; brothels; Sydney (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a4574 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:45:y:2013:i:1:p:126-141

DOI: 10.1068/a4574

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning A
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().