From Tactical Resistance to Creative Cadence: The Rhythmanalysis in China’s Gulou Night Market

This study investigates the spatiotemporal dynamics of urban informal spaces through a rhythmanalytical lens, offering critical insights for sustainable urban governance and the development of inclusive night-time economies. Drawing on Michel de Certeau’s theory of everyday life practices and Henri Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis, this study interprets the night market as a rhythmic assemblage. This assemblage is interwoven with the strategic, disciplinary rhythms imposed by managers and the tactical, subsistence-oriented rhythms crafted by the vendors. The research finds that urban managers impose a strategic rhythm aimed at order and controllability through the standardization of time, homogenization of space, and institutional clearance. In response, vendors, driven by a subsistence logic shaped by survival pressures develop a repertoire of sophisticated tactical variations. These tactics manifest as flexible uses of time and space to disrupt the established disciplinary framework. Furthermore, based on strong relational networks of “blood, professional, and geographical ties”, dispersed individual tactics can coalesce into a powerful collective rhythm, thereby gaining the capacity for dialog and negotiation in spatial games. The most constructive interactions embody a creative cadence, where vendors proactively integrate local cultural elements into their operations, transforming their practice from resistance into symbiosis, achieving a form of rhythmic harmony with urban development strategies. By integrating rhythmanalysis with the theory of everyday practice, this study constructs the “rhythm game” analytical framework. Its main contribution lies in revealing that the core of power interactions in urban informal spaces is not perpetual confrontation, but rather the contingent possibility of evolution from resistance to rhythmic harmony. This provides crucial theoretical and empirical grounding for understanding the source of vitality in informal spaces and for building a flexible, coordinated, and sustainable governance model.