identify an adult entertainment district in a city of your choice. Explain about how you identify and apply Cameron (2004)'s Typology of Sex Economies to describe the district.

Urban Studies, Vol. 41, No. 9, 16431657, August 2004 f. Carfax Publishing Talelemntl>UllJLp Space, Risk and Opportunity: The Evolution of Paid Sex Markets Samuel Cameron [Paper rst received, September 2093; in final form, March 2004] Summary. The emergence of paid sex markets is a product of various locational economies. By this it is meant that coherent paid sex markets are intimately linked with various economies of agglomeration, synergy, complementarity and 'laddering' whereby an entrant to paid sex consumption may progress from low intimacy/low value added products to those of higher intimacy/higher value added. Physical clustering of traded sex commodities can also enhance the progression of the consumer's ladder by heightening the stimulus to enter such markets for the rst time. This paper discusses the above factors in the context of the economic theory of clubs with particular reference to the use of zoning ordinances to control the location of adult entertainment providers. 1. Introduction This paper is largely theoretical in intent although it does contain reference to some real-world situations. The main content of the paper is an ideal-typical model of how markets for sexual transactions would evolve in the context of a city subject to particular norms of tolerance with respect to different types of sexual activity. Sex exists in the city in the form of li- aisons between people that are the subject of both paid transactions (the obvious example being prostitution) and unpaid relationships. The latter may involve ancillary transactions which may be for sex goods or goods with little sexual dimension in the form of gifts to induce sexual performance. This paper con- centrates on the existence of sex markets, in the city, from the chief disciplinary focus of economic analysis. The central ideas from the literature of economics are the notions of club goods as applied to the determination of optimal city size and the inuence of exter- nalities on optimal city policy towards the treatment of sex markets. In this section, we deal with the issue of formulating a denition of paid sex markets. Section 2 deals with the market for sexual goods and services in the context of the city as an example of the economic theory of clubs without reference to problems of risk and information. These factors are intro- duced in section 3. Section 4 discusses the spatial issues of the positioning of sex trad- ing within the city. A typology of sex market maturity is provided in section 5, which deals with the relationship between tolerance and market expansion potential. The impact of the Internet on the city as a 'club' economy for the provision of sexual goods and ser- vices is discussed in section 6. The conclud- ing discussion is in section 7. The term 'paid sex market' is used to make clear the distinction from the informal market in which there may be a form of Samuel Cameron is in the Bradford Centre for International Development, University of Bradford Pemberton Building, Richmond Road, Bradford, BD7 IDP, UK. Fax: 01274 235 280. Email: sameamerontineonenet 0042-0980 Printi'1360063X On-linei'O41'O9l64315 2004 The Editors of Urban Studies DOI: 10.1080i0042098042000243084 1644 implicit payment which might lead to these being termed quasi-markets. For example, if someone is given an engagement ring this is a commodity which could be construed as a gift since no payment or tangible commodity is received in exchange. However, this may be a situation where the ring-giver is doing so in the hope of obtaining a sustained sup- ply of sexual intercourse. Paid sex markets are dened here along a continuum from media and non-media prod- ucts (magazines, books, DVDs, sex toys, sex clothing, etc.) to live sexual performances such as strip shows, lapdancing, etc. up to actual sexual intercourse. We use the term market simply to cover the fact that some- thing is being bought and sold. The item being bought and sold may be a physical product or the property right to use someone else's body. Hence, legality is not an issue, as illegally sold products are regarded as existing in a market. Sellers may be selling both types of product using the legal product as a cover for the illegal product. The import- ant feature of illegality is the lack of redress for a buyer who receives goods or services which fall short of what is expected in the performance of the trade. The distinction is not quite so simple due to the scarcity of resources in enforcing con- tractual relations in legitimate markets and preventing the pursuance of illegal trades. That is, some consumers will be disadvan- taged due to problems of cost in prosecuting sellers of legal products. Likewise, the en- forcement authorities will be constrained, due to resources and information shortages, from preventing every illegal trade from tak- ing place. In the case of sexual markets, there will also be some penumbra of doubt, in the buyer's mind, about what is legal and what is not. For example, tourists may be misin- formed about what is legal, or not, in the country they have visited. Such misconcep- tions may not be corrected until a person is actually prosecuted. Paid sex markets have long aroused inter- est from journalistic and academic sources. The main thrust of discussion has inevitably been on moral issues with a considerable SAMUEL CAMERON subsidiary interest in health-related issues such as the spread of disease. Despite its comparative neglect (although see Binnie, 1995; Knopp, 1995; Lindell, 1996), the spa- tial element is an important feature of such markets, which has a reciprocal relationship with the moral/health concern. Perspectives on the paid sex market from mainstream economies are simply to analyse it in terms of supply and demand for goods and services (see, for example, Fels, 1980; Cameron, 2002; Cameron and Collin, 2003). Prostitutes, lap dancers, etc. provide services and the sales of videos, DVDs, books, sex toys, bondage clothing, etc. are goods. Per- spectives from Marxist or feminist discourse take us into the notion that coercion and/or alienation are involved, in the service sector of the market, as the individual selling the product is infringing on a property right in the individual's body and thus alienating their labour (see, for example, Chapkiss, 1997, ch. 6). Sex markets may also be analysed from the view-point of any disci- pline which deals with retail trade and con- sumer behaviour in general such as anthropology, marketing, scoiology and ge- ography. 2. Sex in the City Club Economy This section considers the city largely from the view-point of the economic theory of clubs. The formulation of the theory of clubs is attributed to Buchanan (1965) and the full scope of the model, and its applications, can be found in Sandler and Tschirhart (1980). We begin by largely ignoring factors of risk and information until the following section. The key elements in the theory of clubs are the sharing of costs amongst a group of users and the presence of positive externali- ties in the expansion of the number of users up to the point where congestion sets in and adding a member detracts from the average benets per member. The positive externali- ties arise from the benets one derives from the mere presence of other users. For the members of the club, the optimum member- ship is obtained by maximising the size of the gap between average member benets SPACE, RISK AND OPPORTUNITY and average member costs. Beyond this point, it is in the interests of the members to exclude potential new members who should, then, go off to form a similar club with other people. In the context of a city or district, direct exclusion is not generally accepted in modern economies as people, unlike busi- nesses, do not have to be granted permission to move into an area. Clearly, individuals do not move to, or stay, in a city purely to use it as a 'sex club economy', but they do use it as a club for a range of retail opportunities of which sexual trade is part. In the simplest formulation of a club goods model, it is assumed that all individuals have identical tastes and there is no discrimination by members against other members. If there is some form of discrimi- nation, then the individual member will suf- fer losses from the presence of certain types of other members in the club. At the level of the city, this can take the form of consump- tion-based moral disapproval which can lead to policies designed to exclude people via self-selection as they will migrate to another city (club). A good example of this would be Salt Lake City, in the US, which does not prohibit non-members of the Church of Lat- ter Day Saints from partaking in city con- sumption, but it limits consumption of disapproved-of goods via time, use and place ordinances. Such limitations may be moti- vated by a desire to help club members from falling prey to temptations they would wish to resist, but they will also have the effect of excluding people who are causing 'negative externalities' on existing members due to their consumption and their perceived moral character. In such circumstances, city gover- nance authorities make a conscious decision to trade off potential economic expansion against gains in average benets to certain club members. Turning to the cost-saving or sharing as- pects of cities, there are several factors which are associated with size which may, cereris paribus, provide increases in average benets to a consumer, in paid sex markets, from living in a larger city. 1645 2.] Diversity in Supply It has been long noted that cities have played a vital role in the production of goods and services (see Jacobs, 1970, chs 35, for the classic exposition of this). The agglomer- ation of population in one place has histori- cally brought economies of scale in production and reductions in transactions costs for nding products and suppliers of industrial inputs. Now that production is more centred on information rather than source materials, the city can still serve a role of providing networks to facilitate synergy in combining ideas and personnel. Further, the larger the collection of people in one place, the greater is the variety of goods that can be offered for sale up to some upper limit. The consumption of sexual goods and ser- vices in the sex economy is likely to benet, ceteris paribus, from expansion of city size as the larger the city is the more the diversity of commercial sexual goods and services it can offer. 2.2 Variety-Seeking by Individuals The previous point dealt with the issue of a diversity of goods and services across the market, which is variety at the aggregate level. We turn now to a different factor in terms of variety-seeking by individuals. Whilst mainstream economics does not pay much attention to the role of variety-seeking in consumption, it has been noted by a num- ber of heterodox scholars such as Scitovsky (1986) and in the marketing literature (see, for example, Lattin and McAlister, 1985); Morgan and Trivedi, 1996). One could extend this argument to sexual markets, further noting that the sociobiologi- cal literature proposes that individuals are driven by their sexual impulses to seek var- iety for the purpose of maximising their gen- etic potential. Whilst a man who visits a prostitute may not be intending to have a child with this person, sociobiology (Wilson, 1975; Wright, 1994) suggests that the under- lying urge driving the act is a desire to spread one's genes amongst a wider pool of part- ners. There is some evidence that consump- 1646 tion of sexual goods is likewise dependent on variety. For example, porn magazine and video/DVD collectors do not tend to content themselves with using the same magazine or disc repeatedly but tend to build up huge collections (see O'Toole, 1998). The same expression of a need for variety can be found in consumer reports at the website of the World Sex Guide (http://www.worldsex guide.org) where the reports on sites of pros- titution lay great emphasis on the range of girls on offer at a particular location. Given the scarcity of resources, variety- seeking consumers have to spread them- selves across a range of consumption inputs over time and therefore they have more need for a body of fellow consumers of the same goods to sustain enough demand for the products. Thus there are benets to specialis- ation of sex industries in a specic location. This kind of proposition can be derived from traditional models of retail location such as central place theory (Losch, 1939/ 1954; Christaller, 1933/1966), and gravity models in general. The notable difference in the sex market case is that travel and transaction costs do not necessarily promote central lo- cation or a dispersal pattern which follows any rigid rules. This is because variety de- mand will be circumscribed by the type of policy rules in sex markets which we go into in more detail below. 2.3 Bundling Consumers in sexual markets may be en- gaged in a consumption episode where the sexual gratication is linked to other con- sumption elements. For example, stag nights, birthday parties and job-leaving celebrations may provide a number of interlocking con- sumption items. A dedicated urban sexual market enclave will increase the scope for consumers to 'bundle' consumption elements together. A good example of this is that a number of provincial UK towns have mass- age parlours, situated near soccer stadia (see McCoy, 1998, for documentation of this). Another good example of bundling is the emergence of hotels and clubs, which serve SAMUEL CAMERON as a front for combined gambling and prosti- tution. The importance of bundled consump- tion is acknowledged in policy-making which sometimes strives to control the extent of sexual trade by framing zoning ordinances (see Tucker, 1997, for examples) in such a way that the sex content of the business (i.e. nude dancing as 'entertainment') is not per- mitted in locations which sell alcohol, or in stipulating minimum distances from similar suppliers. 2.4 Laddering Paid sex market products can be classied according to different hierarchies. For exam- ple, we can rank them in order of the degree of perceived social stigma, the level of hu- man contact involved (for example, a maga- zine involves much less human contact than a visit to a prostitute), the length of time required to make the transaction complete and the risk of being caught and punished by legal enforcers or signicant others like part- ners and relatives. Laddering of goods is an additional signicant element, along with variety demand, in creating synergies among suppliers. We could envisage an example of ladder- ing where an individual begins their con- sumption with (or in search of) audio-visual material or sex aids (inatables, vibrators, etc.) but is drawn into traditional 'peep shows' or the more modern lap dancing clubs in the region and could then graduate to full-scale purchases of prostitution services. A person could, of course, go in a reverse direction and there can be repeating loops of complementarity in the consumption of all these types of goods. Laddering is one reason why sex markets might tend to stay in the same location, unless extreme efforts are made to shift them, as closure of some sellers will lead to replacement by new suppliers because of the spillovers in network demand due to the presence of other sex market products. SPACE, RISK AND OPPORTUNITY 2.5 Herd Effects Herd effects (see Manski, 2000) will occur when people increase their consumption in emulation of other consumers. The Internet is helping to create an image where it is seen as a more everyday thing to express sexual fetishes, buy sexual 'toys', hire escorts, look at pornography, etc. and thus people may feel inclined to engage in such consumption the more of it there seems to be. Having passed the threshold of being willing to en- gage in any sex market consumption, indi- viduals can go even further in challenging what Marcuse (1955) calls the 'psychic ther- midor' which restricts our hedonic consump- tion even when we have overcome fears of punishment for our sins. This overall in- crease in demand may lead to more urban centre on-site sales due to 'passing trade'i i.e. spur-ofthe moment decisions and also occasions where immediate gratication may be desired. 2.6 Reputation In sex markets, consumers face problems of uncertainty in that the nature of the product being sold may differ from what is expected. There may also be doubt about the precise legal status of what is being sold. For exam- ple, if one purchases an illegal porn video, there is little scope for redress if it turns out not to be the title asked for or is not a porn title at all. A standard method of suppliers assisting consumers in uncertain markets is to provide a brand, which symbolises some degree of predictability and guarantee of a quality level. With legal products, the existence of trademark registration in the brand gives the consumer opportunities for redress if the good or service purchased is not of the stan- dard expected. Certain well-known brands have emerged in sex markets such as Play- boy to the point where Playboy sweatshirts are now widely marketed and worn along with other non-sex-related logos. In the case of illegal trading, there can still be reputation capital in individual productsfor example, 1647 a consumer might come to know that one brand of illegal hard porn is more reliable than another in terms of its tness for their needs. A city can provide an additional form of reputation capital signied by location of trade in a particular region. Whole cities like Bangkok and others in Scandinavia will have served this function for visiting consumers and, within cities, districts like Soho in Lon- don also full such a role. The brand identication not only ags up the nature of the good or service to some extent, but also signals to the consumer some level of safety as the continued existence of the region sug- gests that there is a fair degree of tolerance by enforcement authorities. The emergence of reputation capital will attract consumers to a particular region and thus spur the growth of a sex market region. 2.7 Option Demand Economists have long made the case for considering 'option value' or 'option de- mand'. This arises from the fact that con- sumers may derive benets not just from the consumption of goods but also from knowing that they have the freedom to consume cer- tain goods if they so wished. This is the option value of a good which means it brings gains to the city economy greater than can be estimated from price and sales. There may be a hedge against risk factor (i.e. someone can obtain sex goods and services if unexpected events, such as loss of a partner, lead them to need them). Option value is likely to be higher when the other factors listed above are stronger. 2.8 Atmosphere Benets Sexual trade may bring additional positive externality benets to consumers. That is, those who do not consume the products of the sex industry may experience benecial side effects even if they do not obtain any option value. Although some citizens may frown on the ambience of a sex market, others may nd the frisson of excitement and 1648 danger that is perceived to reside there to be benecial to them. This is discussed, paren- thetically, by Tucker (1997) with respect to the attempt to change the character of Times Square in New York by dispersal of adult entertainment providers and attendant off- site sexual trading. 3. Risk and Opportunity The development of paid sex markets has been inuenced by the ad hoc tolerance pol- icy-makers have shown to entrepreneurs op- erating largely outside, or on the fringes of, the legal system. Risk has to be shared in some degree between the consumers and suppliers in the market. Consumers of sex market goods and services who are in exist- ing relationships where the partner disap- proves will face additional costs of discovery (see Cameon and Collins, 2003, for an ex- plicit model of this). Widespread realisation of this fact helps to account for the increas- ing phenomenon of community action, as opposed to police action, against the negative externality of 'kerb-crawling' (Hubbard, 1998). Such community action may feature vigilante patrols to harass prostitutes and po- tential clients, and also the use of cameras, hand-held video equipment and manual recording of vehicle number plates. Such actions may be aimed at supporting the threat of possible 'naming and shaming' tactics in local newspapers and other media, or even the threat of direct contact with the family and spouses of discovered 'kerb-crawlers'. The rise of this phenomenon lends further weight to the view that the burden of risk for low-priced 'street' sex is being shifted onto the consumer (see Bernstein, 2001, for fuller documentation of the 1990s shift to targeting clients in US street prostitution). Thus, illegality of goods and services adds some new costs to the stated money price of sex goods (1) search costs of nding products/services as illegality will impose transactions costs due to lack of advertising and secrecy; SAMUEL CAMERON (2) explicit costs of punishment by the legal system if caught, such as nes and prison sentences; (3) additional costs following from (1) in the form of restricted opportunities to con- sume from the need to avoid detection; (4) punishment costs from beyond the legal systemifor example, from a partner or parent or through loss of a job or restric- ted promotion opportunities due to con- sumption at work; (5) Tip-off\" risks from unscrupulous suppli- ers. 1n the heyday of purchasing VHS video tapes from covert retail outlets in the UK, the situation arose where an individual asked for a particular title and was asked to wait. The vendor then went downstairs and wrote the desired title on the box of an entirely different lm (see O'Toole, 1998). Due to the illegality of the product, the buyer does not have recourse to consumer protection legis- lation. The risks to the suppliers of arrest, punish- ment, vigilantism and even closure mean that discounted prots are lower than they other- wise would be, all other things being equal. In the standard utility-maximising model of risk used by most economists, optimal risk- taking would be undertaken by sellers and buyers, which would be reected, in equilib- rium, in such observed relationships as prices being lower, ceteris paribus, in a higher-risk region for a higher-risk good/service. The limited amount of statistical work on pricing of prostitution (see Moffatt, 2004) does not directly shed any light on these propositions. The econometric evidence, given by Moffatt, seems to suggest that price is only really likely to vary much with what he terms 'quality' (meaning the physical desirability of the seller) in sex service markets. In circumstances of potentially cata- strophic risk, one response for the buyer is to seek out opportunities for low-risk consump- tion. For example, in the case of prostitution it has been found that men who are away from home frequently (and thus less likely to be detected by partners) are more likely to SPACE, RISK AND OPPORTUNITY consume (Cameron and Collins, 2003). Low- risk opportunities may not present them- selves on a regular basis. As in the example just given, one example of low-risk oppor- tunity-making is for there to be some plaus- ible alibi as to why the person may be in the vicinity of sexual services/goods so that, un- less they are detected in agmnte, it is poss- ible they may escape all the forms of punishment costs. The classic case of this is to use some front for the sale of sex such as hotels, massage parlours, karaoke bars, etc. The provider can exploit the use of the front to overcharge for prices of the legitimately sold goods (drinks, meals, etc.) rather than marking up the price of the sexual goods/ser- vices themselves. Thus the risk is shared through sharing the costs of creating the risk-reducing opportunity. 4. Your Space or Mine? Locational As- pects of Sex in the City The factors listed above can operate in a spatial or non-spatial way. An important spa- tial factor is the response by those operating as agents of those we are treating as if they were members of a club economy in the form of a city. That is, chiey local politicians. They seek to regulate the city in a dynamic environment where there will be economic growth in some locations and contraction in others. This involves interfering in markets, on occasions, to reallocate the usages at- tached to land. Market processes will gener- ate high values for some retail land whilst leaving other areas as low-value sites. Econ- omic decline is not the only reason for the emergence of low-value spaces. Urban de- velopment may effectively decimate the re- tail value potential in some districts. A major case of this is where a road development is such that crucial 'passing trade' is lost due to inconvenience and sent to other areas. Whatever the reason for the emergence of a low-value space, the fact remains that it should prove attractive to sexual en- trepreneurs who are denied the usage of prime retail sites in situations of low toler- ance of their activities. The only usual 1649 alternative usage for low-value areas is for fringe retail/business use or for them to de- cay into dereliction. They may also overlap residential areas of relatively poor and voice- less individuals who are unlikely to be able to drive the sex market from their neigbour- hoodalthough there are cases in the UK (for example, in Bradford and Birmingham; and see Hubbard, 1998) of faith-based vigi- lante groups inuencing the dispersal of prostitutes from low-value spaces. Recently, we seem to nd a dual standard in enforcement (see Schlosser, 2003; Bern- stein, 2001) where sexual material is allowed in such respectable outlets as major hotel pay movie channels, yet the peripheral trade in low-value areas is being heavily regulated. The city and state of New York have provided many interesting legal cases in in- teresting years which have shaped policy in the US in general. For example, the 1995 zoning ordinance in New York city proposed by the municipal government made it illegal for any commercial sex establishment (clubs, bookstores selling explicit materials, adult video outlets and bars and entertainment houses) to operate within 500 feet of residen- tial districts, schools, or houses of worship. Of the 177 business affected, only 28 were allowed to remain at the sites from which they were operating, while the other 149 were forced either to alter their venues en- tirely, to close down, or to relocate to an approved zoning area. The area in which they could re-establish their businesses was zoned as industrial/manufacturing near the New York City waterfront (Serlin 45). As Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner (1998) point out, this relocation policy meant that businesses catering to clients from either het- erosexual or homosexual populations, be- tween whom there is a history of animosity that has been known to result in violence, were to be sharing the same city space. Given a diminished police presence in that area, with its attendant and well-established reputation for danger, Berlant and Warner contend that there is potential for increased violence against gay men implicit in this zoning. 1650 In general, there have been a number of highly restrictive zoning ordinances in Amer- ican cities (see Tucker, 1997; McMillen, 1998) which have attempted to achieve dis- persal of sex trade with particular emphasis on live entertainment in the form of nude dancing. Besides the requirement of distance from schools, housing developments, etc., there is also the frequent requirement of dis- persal of the adult entertainment outlets so that they do not develop a synergic cluster of the type discusssed above and below. Adult entertainment entrepreneurs have attempted to overcome this by seeking redress in fed- eral and state courts using constitutional amendements as the basis of their case. The typical appeal case (against restrictive zon- ing) consists of a claim that the refusal is against free speech. The defence against such an appeal comes in two parts. The rst is that alternate sites have been offered and there- fore the right to free speech is not impaired and the second is that there are 'secondary effects' problems which may be deemed to override the free speech argument. The sec- ondary effects are equivalent to what economists would term 'negative externali- ties'ithat is, things like increased crime, a rise in the rate of HIV-AIDS infection, a loss in the value of property and amenity in the neighbourhood. There is a link between the two parts of the defence in that clustering of sex trade is alleged to lead to more secondary effects. The resolution of these issues in the legal area is classically demonstrated in the land- mark case of City of New York versus Stringfellows in 1998 which follows in a long line of US cases since 1976. Stringfellows is a successful UK-based lap dancing chain which was seeking to expand its base of operations. In the Stringellows case, the court rejected the claim that the offer of alternative sites to sex traders of land in industrial areas, underdeveloped land, ware- house areas and parking lots was not a sufcient compensation for the rejection of a central place site. Turning to the second part of the argu- ment, the court came to a remarkable de- SAMUEL CAMERON cision on the handling of evidence on the secondary effects. Secondary effects have to be shown by defendants, in such cases, via the presentation of an 'adult use' report. In many cases, these reports are largely regurgi- tations of adult use reports from other cases (the paridgmatic use report being Town of Hyde Park, 1996) in which the defendants have succeeded. Any trained social scientists would expect the secondary use report to be a reasoned statistical document which tries to isolate any alleged causal inuences of sex establishments, on deterioration of a district, from other causes. Unfortunately, this has not been the case as the reports are, by and large, an accumulation of anecdotal evidence from self-interested parties. The remarkable precedent set in the Stringfellows' case was the weight that Judge Titone was prepared to give to this type of evidence. Rather than regretting the existence of bona de expert/ forensic evidence, he found that anecdotal evidence and reported experi- ence can be as telling as statistical data and can serve as a legitimate basis for nding negative secondary ef- fects ...particularly when, as here, the non-empirical information is extensive and indicative of a clear relationship between adult uses and urban decay (quoted in McMillen, 1998). Given this willingness to decide on the basis of what is primarily opinion rather than evi- dence in the proper sense of the word, the use of zoning legislation becomes a tool for discriminatory club behaviour in terms of the concepts discussed earlier in this paper. Zon- ing is a means of excluding certain busi- nesses from the city club sex economy (and thereby denying certain members easy access to certain types of consumption) for the benet of other members. It is done under the guise of preventing negative externalities of city growth. That is, the wealth in the central business district is proving attractive to sex market entrepreneurs. Zoning regulations have been used to shift sex market businesses away from their estab- lished trading places to more marginal land SPACE, RISK AND OPPORTUNITY as well as preventing them from clustering in central business districts. The extreme case of this comes from the Progressive Policy Institute's publications on the 'new econ- omy' (see their website at http://www. neweconomyindex . org I metro I part6 . html) which seeks to give guidance to American urban development, suggest demolition of such areas as desirable to eradicate prosti- tution, although one wonders where they think the activity is going to move to. This 'shifting of sex zones' is a relatively recent focus of attention in urban policy as it has emerged in the past 100 years (Frances, 1994). Daniels (1984) observed, of English- speaking countries that The growth of an urban middle class which accompanied the industrial expan- sion of the 19th century created a class of leisured wives and daughters who sought to use urban space in new ways, most notably by shopping and promenading in the central business districts. A variant of this was the fashionable Melbourne pas- time of 'doing the Block', or promenading around the Collins, Swanston, Bourke and Elizabeth Streets block of shops. With more 'respectable' women using the streets, the presence of what they regarded as 'nuisances' had to be minimised and preferably eliminated. Hawkers, beggars and drunks were all targets of this cam- paign, but prostitutes were especially targeted. The reason for this is obvious: while it might be annoying for a bourgeois woman to be accosted by beggars and so on, it was extremely embarrassing for her to have to encounter 'fallen women' and, worse still, to be mistaken for one of their number and propositioned by men (Daniels, 1984). Where the sex economy is regarded as a deviant and only reluctantly tolerated sector of the city in the North American and British economies and to a lesser extent in some European, Asian and Latin American cases, its contribution is downplayed and there is no coherent policy towards it. Returning to the question of the Progressive Policy Institute's 1651 suggestion to demolish sex enclaves, clearly, in the short-run the volume of trading may fall in absolute terms. There will be some displacement to more fragmented trading within the jurisdictional area and there may be some migration of demanders and suppli- ers to nearby regions. The latter case would in some circumstances create an externality problem of exporting 'social pollution' across urban centres where there is an excess amount of spending due to lack of co-ordi- nation between different policy jurisdictions that are competing with each other in the export of 'undesirable sex markets'. This kind of problem has been highlighted in general economic models of crime as a form of negative externality (Weicher, 1971; Hellman and Alper, 1997). In the longer run, one would expect the dedicated enclave sim- ply to reemerge in another run-down area as it is unlikely that we could have perfectly balanced growth in a city where some locales do not become economic graveyards. The notion of demolition or razing the sex market enclaves of cities is more a ritualistic posture of cleansing a disease from the social body of the community than a rational econ- omic development policy. It also confuses cause and effect. That is, how can we attri- bute urban blight to the presence of sex markets when there has been a prevalent policy stance of forcing sex trade into areas that are already blighted. 5. Typology of Sex Market Maturity Having looked at the idea of a city and its sex market as a club good, we now turn to the issue of how markets are able to develop under the limitation that sex trading is cir- cumscribed by policies, reflecting greater or lesser degrees of tolerance, as described above. The term maturity is used here in the sense that something which is 'mature' has had the opportunity to reach its full potential. In the present context, we are talking about economic maturity so that complete maturity would be where sex trade is able to establish a level of expansion commensurate with what would be obtained if it were treated like 1652 more non-contentious everyday consumer goods. I do not enter into any debate about what is the morally correct strategy for the regulation of a city sex economy. 5.] The Sporadic Sex Economy In the sporadic sex economy, fringe criminal or poorly equipped entrepreneurs run iso- lated, usually poor-quality, establishments (or in the extreme case sell their bodies on the streets) in low-value economic spaces with little expansion potential. There is little continuity in such markets as traders are forced to move due to episodic enforcement of the law or restrictive application of ordi- nances in letting and licensing. This creates spaces which lack feelings of safety for con- sumers and street sex sellers, thus further curbing the economic development of such spaces. Sporadic markets have a self-perpet- uating nature as, being isolated enclaves, they also lack the property of providing ex- cuses for being in the area for other reasons and thus are not good 'opportunity spaces'. There will be some concentration of sellers in the market due to the Hotelling model type of reasons but this will not be sufcient to push the sex economy into a more dynamic phase and hence we would not term it clus- tering. These weak clusters of the sex econ- omy may even be located on the outer ring of a city's structure, but they remain sporadic because of lack of linkages with more toler- ated activities in the inner rings. The area around the King's Cross railway station in London is a good example of a sporadic sex economy. There are other examples to be found in Britain's cities, a notable example being Belfast where traditional religious fer- vour meant that there were no sex shops at all for a long time: currently there is one, Anne Summers high street lingerie shop (as in most UK towns of any size), and a very small collection of porn/sex toy/etc. shops on the less traversed edges of the Smitheld market area which is in the shadows of the major high street retailing enclosed shopping centre.1 SAMUEL CAMERON 5.2 The Partially Clustered Sex Economy The current idea of a market cluster is usu- ally dened with respect to the ideas of Porter (1998) who considered it to be a group of industries connected by specialised buyer seller relationships or related by technologies or skills. There is a degree of hair-splitting in deciding whether a prostitute or lap dancer or booth stripper are in the same industry or different segments of the same industry, but the general Porterian concept seems to apply to sex markets. For example, there are cognate skills or technologies employed throughout the industry. One skill that is common to these employments is putting new and apprehensive, or morally inhibited customers, at ease. In this case, we have groups of sellers of the same products in specic locations which may also tend to be assisted by the presence of other types of trade in the locations to provide increased opportunity to visit the area. The clustering will be due to more than the Hotelling type reasonsithat is, cluster- ing provides variety in the offer of products. Partial clustering can take place in low-value spaces if they are sufciently easily accessed in a safe manner. The low-value spaces may also be more likely to be tolerated by author- ities if they are located with respect to higher-value spaces in such a way that they do not threaten them or indeed may enhance them. The classic model for the partially clustered sex economy can be seen in various phases of the late 20th-century development in Soho, London, of sex booklvideo shops and strip clubs and in the window prosti- tution of Amsterdam. 5.3 The Partially Laddered Sex Economy The term 'laddering' is being here applied to some degree of directional clustering from the view-point of the consumer. That is, they may move up or down between products which offer them different degrees of safety from various costs. Most of what was said in the last category also applies to this one. We may of course have combinations of the de- SPACE, RISK AND OPPORTUNITY gree of clustering and laddering in any given sex market but laddering is conceptually a higher stage of development than clustering. The laddered sex economy provides entry points for those who feel more comfortable 'cruising' an area with an eye to becoming a regular consumer of sex products. Whilst cruising, they get the opportunity to view other goods and services they may not have previously been aware that they wanted. The existence of such demand complementarity linkages creates an incentive for rms to locate near each other in order to reap the benets. Nevertheless, ambiguous partial tol- erance and zonal restriction prevent the emergence of full-scale laddering and clus- tering. 5.4 The Mature Sex Economy The mature urban sex economy displays a high level of both clustering and laddering. The extreme case would be where a whole city is geared up to the provision of sex goods and services. This is difcult to nd in the real world. For example, the sex econ- omy of Amsterdam is far from being the totality of the city's trading. It does, like the sex economy of Vienna, exhibit pronounced clustering and some degree of laddering but these are not fully developed due to limits on the nature of franchising and licensing. The general point to be made here is that legalis- ation of trade does not necessarily guarantee a fully mature sex economy unless the legal- isation is across the board. For example (Chapkiss, 1997, ch. 7), the 1971 Nevada leglislation provided legal brothels but only in smaller counties, thus partitioning the gambling sin economy and the sex sin econ- omy, by allowing legal full-scale gambling in the urban areas. The Amsterdam and Viennese situations display the existence of a full sex economy rather than just isolated forms of trade. There is overt prostitution plus 'cut-down'lpartial prostitution (that is, in Vienna the 'kabinsex' provides 'holein-the wall' relief for men from an unseen participant) and nearby other mild forms of titillation in clubs and bars and 1653 porn vendors of print and lmed product. This is a pedestrianised model where the consumers circulate through the levels of provision with wide scope for search over the product aspects. The concentric sex market model is one where we have the most socially unaccept- able (partially and reluctantly tolerated) in the outer 'ring' of the conurbation which may literally be on a ring road which facili- tates entry into the circles of the sex markets. That is, trade will be away from high-value residences and retail and largely out of sight of those most likely to experience discomfort from its presence. Total maturity would in- volve increasing levels of tolerance as we move successively into the inner rings. At the innermost ring, in the central business district, we have the 'sanitised' sex economy of hotels with pay-for-view porn, erotic lin- gerie shops alongside the standard high street stores, and erotic sections within mainstream retailers of print and digital media. This inner ring may contain the hostess club, lap danc- ing club, escort service providers, etc. if these can be sited and presented in a way that is conformable with prevailing social norms. This requires that sex trading by such spe- cialists be normalised as a business practice and thus is free from associations with drug dealing, extortion, etc. which will require it to be pushed into an outer ring. A good example of a move to maturity in the UK can be found in the movement of the 'Spearmint Rhino' lap dancing chain into Birmingham, one of the largest cities in the UK. Here, Spearmint Rhino have an out-of- town motorway-situated club, but also a large venue on the edge of the centre of town in an area of potential regeneration. Birming- ham is in a process of regeneration having demolished its notorious 'Bull Ring' inner- city shopping centre. The new inner-city Spearmint Rhino has a large ostentatious facade in the style of a mock Edwardian public house or music hall. This is in marked contrast to the semi- or fully legal bordellos in some fairly tolerant and mature sex mar- kets in continental Europe which use fairly anonymous frontages (i.e. explicit absence of 1654 descriptions of the purposes of the premises). The style of the inner-city Birmingham Spearmint Rhino is signicant as it sends the iconic message of 'harmless fun' of a sexual nature outside a designated 'outoftheway' market tolerance zone. Not all Spearmint Rhino outlets are of this type as there are some which attempt to convey the 'anon- ymity' message by appearing more like a fairly middle-market health club. This kind of tailored niche marketing is a considerable factor in creating a drive to maturity in city paid sex markets. A mature sex economy clearly can be benecial to the economy of a city if fully developed and, in principle, social welfare can be higher with specialisation of certain cities in the sex economy while others specialise in other goods and services. The mature sex market creates multiplier effects of spending from the trade generated by in- ner-circle integration in the life of the city. This may also provide a laddering effect as individuals progress into other sex market goods located in the further-out circles of the city. The location of an outermost circle on a ring road with easy motorway access creates an additional revenue stream from the 'ex- porting' of consumers of the least-tolerated goods/services from other areas. In the ma- ture sex economy, we expect the degree of tolerance to be reected in licensing over where a seller can be in the ring. That is, there will not be raids, arrests or disruptions to the business practices in the outer ring even if they are strictly speaking illegal. Their illegality will simply be ignored or the cover used to disguise the establishment will not be too deeply probed. In a fully mature sex economy, street prostitution of the most literal type would tend to erode as the ven- dors are likely to be integrated into a licens- ing system of the Amsterdam 'window prostitute' type or esconced in the legally fronted quasi-bordellos of massage parlours, etc. Even if all forms of prostitution are legal, it would be more efcient for the protection of consumers and suppliers if they are building-based rather than street-based. Any vestigial trace of street prostitution SAMUEL CAMERON will reect either excess supply which may be due to povertythat is, those who are destitute or addicted but unable to gain em- ployment in sexual trading may attempt to sell themselves by undercutting the market priceior violating normal safety practices which are upheld by vendors in the normal building-based market. As I am here dis- cussing the maturity of sexual markets from an economic point of view, I have not said anything about issues of whether regulators will use health checks, curfews, etc. on pros- titutes. However, if we are to have inte- gration of sex markets into the general framework of markets, then ultimately they have to be subject to health and safety regu- lations, worker rights and product liability in the same way as all other goods. These issues are coming to maturity in some cases as sex workers are now joining trade unions in the service sector. In the less-than-fully-mature sex economy, there is some ad hoc provision for the welfare of employees. Depending on the city in question, this takes the form, in the UK at any rate, of multiagency ap- proaches from differing charities, health or- ganisations, other NGOs or temporarily funded project bodies. 6. The Internet and Sex Market Maturity The inuence of the Internet on sex markets is indisputable. Anyone with a credit card and modest abilities in using a search engine can access porn images and buy sex toys in a very short space of time. Even if they are not trying to do these things, they are highly likely to receive such information by acci- dent whilst searching for other things, through pop-up advertising or even overt 'page-jacking' by intrusive software. Al- though we have commented on its inuence at certain points above, it is probably useful to provide some specic commentary on how it may inuence the functioning of cities as sex club economies. The rapid growth of the Internet is a dy- namic element which disrupts the established immature and semi-mature urban sex mar- kets. There are a number of different nega- SPACE, RISK AND OPPORTUNITY rive effects which the internet has on the prosperity of urban sex centres (I) The capacity to render the product in digital form would seem to undermine factors leading to local specialisation in the sex market. That is, one can obtain audio-visual products down a modem or ISDN connection without having actu- ally to visit a retail outlet in person or have a product delivered by mail order. This would erode the need for clusters of video stores or porn cinemas. (2) The growing feeling of security over on- line credit card transactions in terms of both guarantee of service and escape from detection, by those who may disap- prove, will intensify desires to use the Internet instead of an on-site purchasing method. (3) Whilst it might be felt that there are sex services for which the Internet cannot provide adequate substitutes, one could argue that it may provide more intimacy for consumers of overt sex acts. The live webcam broadcast is a fairly close sub- stitute for the 'peep show' type of club performance, but it may provide more intimacy for the consumer than they can obtain in the live performance situation. Live, and static, sex websites seem to exhibit a quasi-celebrity 'fan' relation- ship between suppliers and consumers. This is reected in them often following the generic model of a website for an actor or musicianthat is, sections for a guestbook, requests, news, updates, etc. This grants a certain ownership and inuence to the consumer, at a 'safe distance', which has traditionally been excluded from most live paid sex trans- action situations. Given the above factors, it would seem that Internet sales can remove the advantages of a clustered sex market as it does not matter where the product is sold from and Internet sales may have certain advantages for con- sumers. However, there may be a number of spillovers from increased Internet sales to increased commercial sex in the city due to 1655 various factors. An Internet presence may enhance the sales of established brands in the sex market such asifor example, Playboy magazine. Internet advertising may alert peo- ple to the presence of traders in their own region of which they were previously un- aware. Internet information dissemination may also attract additional sex tourists to established mature urban sex markets. This can span a number of dimensions such as reassurances on risk and product quality from previous consumers. 7. Concluding Remarks This paper has looked at the total collectivity of sex market activity as an analytical cate- gory rather than delving into individual case studies or the statistics for the individual product categories. The factors behind the development of specialist urban centres of sex market activity have been identied and a typology of the maturity of sexual markets has been proposed. Entrepreneurs in these markets have been circumscribed by risk and opportunity due to the unpredictable and am- biguous legislation under which they have operated. This does generate high prots for some entrepreneurs, but it curtails the overall expansion of the market even in the cases where the market is at a relatively mature growth state. The continued expansion of the Internet presents a new element in the evol- ution of paid sex markets. At rst sight it may appear to undermine the stability and structure of paid sex markets in cities, but it may be that it will ultimately facilitate the transition to mature sex economies. The above remarks relate solely to the issue of the best self-interested policy by urban planners in one location. It may, of course, be the case that formal or informal competition over the sex trade could be counter-productive to some extent due to lack of co-ordination between urban centres. That is, a degree of specialisation in trade in nearby cities may be welfare-improving. 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