Environment and Society Forum: Drinking Spaces and Places – Examining who drinks alcohol, where and why?

Time: 10:00 - 16:00
Date: 10 February 2010
Venue RGS-IBG, London

The impact of drinking alcohol in excess is seen both in terms of individual health and disorder in public spaces. This seminar focuses on why policy levers need to recognise the importance of where and how people drink.

This seminar will look at how studying the geographies of drinking could be used to join-up policy levers across Government. Do local government, health authorities and police forces have the tools and knowledge they need? Is the right data being generated, and are targets to meet the right ones? Policy debates have tended to focus on individual drinking behaviour, linked to ‘problematic’ groups such as young people, and the role of alcohol pricing identified as one of the main solutions.

By looking at the spaces and places in which people drink, can the nature and scope of how policies can join-up to tackle the different problems related to individual health impacts, public disorder, and violence within in the home be identified? This inter-disciplinary seminar, with key speakers from policy, as well as practitioners and academia from across the debate, will discuss these issues.