Concrete Morals: the spatial significance of 'the red-light area'; a comparative case study of Hull and Rotterdam, 1880s-2020s.

This thesis presents a sociological study of the shifting geographies of ‘the red-light area’ in the port cities of Hull (UK) and Rotterdam (Netherlands) at various critical juncture between the 1880s-2020s. Encompassing concerted waves of heightened social and urban change in Hull and Rotterdam, the sample period is divided into five empirical ‘time-chapters’ of analysis. This includes the climax of Industrial urbanisation on the threshold of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the interwar years of economic recovery, the post-War era of urban reconstruction, the heritage years of waterfront regeneration, and the contemporary era of cultural placemaking. Navigating the spatial analysis through these critical chapters in the urban biographies of Hull and Rotterdam, I compare the location and relocation of ‘the red-light area’ in the cities as a shifting geography of female street-based sex work that also emphasises shifting perceptions around morality, sexuality and the city that differ or are constant between the two cities. Looking at the primary (e.g., known) ‘red-light area’ in Hull and Rotterdam in each time-chapter, I examine the spatial contexts of the sites chronologically to explore the locational significance and as a way of understanding how rhythms of social change leave their traces on the urban environment. Exploring patterns of urban transformation through a lens of sex work, this study engages with locational actors of urban planning, policy and development, and social actors of political, economic, and cultural relations that collectively suggest and underpin the moral geographies of the cities under the distinct contours of time-and-place. Drawing on a qualitative mixed methodology of archival, visual and walking research, I argue for the spatial significance of ‘the red-light area’ in processes of urban transformation in an artful, sensate approach that also demonstrates a sociological reading of the moral coding of urban space.