As cities increasingly begin to acknowledge the reality of 24-hour activity and use, many cities have sought to harness the economic opportunities of 24-hour city design while other cities have yet to embrace the 24-hour spectrum. Where the lives of many urban denizens are not represented within a conventional 9-5pm work/life day, their search for and the sale of food are also shifted to unconventional hours. Whether this is youth seeking a late-night slice of pizza, shift workers, bus drivers, houseless communities, healthcare workers, and so on, the interaction between people and food at night can range in accessibility, regulation, perception, and need. While the late-night search for pizza might be seen as a noisy community intrusion, the emergency room worker’s need to acquire food late at night might note be perceived in the same manner. The laws and policies that surround food at night can range in a similar fashion and can reveal relations of power, voice, and perception across the spectrum of the urban landscape.

We are currently seeking proposals for book chapters for an edited collection on the relationship between law, policy, governance, and late-night food, which might include licensed or unlicensed purveyors of food such as restaurants, pubs, food carts, food stalls, grocers, corner stores, pop-ups, street food vendors, pizza shops, and so on, located in regions around the globe. Chapters should consider relevant urban law and governance in the context of the 24-hour city, specifically the nighttime portion of the day/night continuum. Potential topics that chapters might engage with could include case studies involving the regulation of hotdog carts in New York City, late-night food restaurants in Vancouver or Montreal, street food vendors in San Diego or southeast Asia, late-night food stalls in Mexico City, or, more broadly, late-night food access and distribution, zoning issues, land-use by-laws, health and safety regulation and inspection, urban food policy development, and so on. Submissions are welcome from professors in any field as well as graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, legal and policy practitioners, and culinary specialists, just to name a few.

Please submit outlines of no longer than 500 words for potential chapters by May 31st, 2023 along with a recent CV and your contact information in the body of the email to Sara.Ross@dal.ca . The subject line of your email should begin with the words “SUBMISSION: LATE NIGHT FOOD” and end with your surname. Attachments may not be opened. You will be notified of our decision on the chapters to be included in our book proposal to the Springer Book Series on “Local and Urban Governance” by early July. A future deadline for completed chapters will be set once our proposal has received an official acceptance by the publisher.