Regulating street prostitution as a public nuisance in the “culture of consumption”: A comparative analysis between Birmingham, Brussels and Milan

This paper will attempt, first, to detect the presence of “spaces of consumption and pleasure,” “centripetal spaces” and “spaces of deprivation” in three selected cities: Birmingham (UK), the Brussels Capital Region (Belgium) and Milan (Italy). Secondly, it will inspect whether the chosen model may help to explain the attitudes to and geographical distribution of street prostitution, i.e., the nui-sance behaviour selected for this paper. To this end, the current local approach to, and spatial location of, street sex work1 is analysed against the backdrop of socio-economic, urban, and architectural changes that have occurred in the past two/three decades in the three selected European cities, drawing also on relevant literature and reports of national/international organisations, as well as on the findings of interviews carried out with, and/or surveys administered to, national experts.