City Road Podcast

How do urban planners regulate the sex industries in our cities? The sex industries - from sex work to porn production - are often perceived and therefore regulated as unsuitable businesses for the high streets and residential neighbourhoods of cities. We talk with Associate Professor Paul Maginn about the role the planning system plays in regulating urban sex-scapes, the conservative morality of regulating the sex industries in cities and the perverse urban outcomes when both collide. Paul argues we need to take the sex-scapes of our cities seriously. "So people say, 'so what do you do?' I say, oh, I study aspects of the sex industry!" Associate Professor Paul Maginn In his edited book, (Sub)Urban Sexscapes, Paul and his co-authors discuss the regulation of the commercial sex industry.(Sub)urban Sexscapes highlights the mainstreaming of commercial sex premises (e.g., sex shops, brothels, strip clubs and queer spaces) and products (e.g., sex toys, erotic literature and pornography); both which are now comm