Spatiotemporal variations in nightlife consumption: A comparison of students in two Dutch cities

•Important between and within city differences exist in nightlife consumption.•Typologies of city-centre nightlife consumption patterns are created.•Participation in different patterns is most strongly shaped by level of education.•Contrary to popular discourses not all patterns involve excessive alcohol consumption.•Alcohol consumption needs to be seen as part of the social practice of going out.

This paper extends the Human Geography literature about the night-time economy through a comparative, time-geographical and quantitative analysis of nightlife consumption practices during students' nights out in the city-centres of the Dutch cities of Utrecht and Rotterdam. Considerable variation in nightlife practices between and within these cities is revealed with the help of cluster and discriminant analyses. For both cities five distinctive types of nightlife consumption are identified, and comparison shows that nightlife practices in Utrecht's city-centre are characterised by a stronger orientation towards bars/pubs and greater alcohol consumption, spatial clustering and ethnic homogeneity than in Rotterdam. It is also demonstrated that, contra some public discourses about the night-time economy, some types of city-centre nightlife practices are not characterised by excessive alcohol consumption. Finally, the analysis suggests that students' participation in different types of nightlife consumption in Utrecht and Rotterdam are only to some extent shaped by age, ethnicity, class and gender; education is most strongly associated with the type of nightlife consumption pursued, and this dimension should be given greater attention in future research on exclusion from the urban night-time economy.