Kimber Lane, Chinatown. Credit:Sahlan Hayes While some parts of the city are eating themselves from the inside out in the grip of alcohol-fuelled ugliness, others are quieter than a country town. Shops close before workers leave their office desks. Transport services dry up before dinner service is done. Infrastructure and planning have not kept pace with burgeoning neighbourhoods and our supposedly free-and-easy city is regulated to the eyeballs. "In a way it's crazy that Sydney doesn't thrive at night because Sydney likes to party more than anywhere else," says Fergus Linehan, a former Sydney Festival director who lives between Sydney, London and Edinburgh. "It's just history and geography that's pushed it into a place that doesn't actually suit it." There is, however, a plan. Spurred by campaigns depicting her as a witch who wanted to close the city down at 9pm, the Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, has overseen the development of Open Sydney, one of the most comprehensive after-dark plans the city has ever seen, parts of which will start to be implemented next year. Under the plan, the city will become a diverse, thriving, late-night metropolis. Grocers, hairdressers, clothing stores, libraries, galleries, coffee shops, pharmacies, restaurants and bars will be open late. Streets and parks will be lit up creatively. Toilets, garbage bins and roving police will be plentiful. Underused venues such as car parks and disused shops will host unexpected pop-up events. Late-night dining will be complemented by more outdoor seating. Train and bus services will run later and more frequently. Red tape will be cut to foster innovation and creativity after dark. Martin Place, one of our great public spaces, will buzz with night markets, alfresco dining and random performances. And the number of people over 45 in the city at night will rise from its current 6 per cent to 40 per cent by 2030.

Sydney city centre ... the buzz disappears at night. "For nearly 10 years we've been focusing on the hole in the doughnut," says the City of Sydney's late-night economy manager, Suzie Matthews. "The hole is just focusing on alcohol-related violence but after 10 years we thought we needed to ask some different questions, and when we did we changed everything." After a year-long process of community consultation, international and domestic research and stakeholder meetings, the City of Sydney has proposed nearly 300 ideas, from 24-hour shuttle trains from Kings Cross to ping pong tables in Hyde Park and an annual Nuit Blanch, where all art galleries stay open late. Art & About, Hyde Park. Credit:Sahlan Hayes The City of Sydney hopes to double the late-night economy's annual turnover to $30 billion and increase after-hours jobs by 25 per cent by 2030. But, more than just economics, it is hoped that a vibrant late-night economy will mean more visitors, less alcohol-fuelled violence, an enhanced global reputation and inspired residents.

"It's about more than whether you can get a latte beyond 11pm," says Jess Scully, the director of Vivid Ideas. "It's about the kind of lifestyle and city we want." Food trucks, Martin Place, city. Credit:Sahlan Hayes In between the littered kebab shops and backpacker bars on Liverpool Street, just off George Street, a former Spanish nightclub is packed with people eating chilli dogs, sharing jugs of punch and dancing to a chill-wave band from the fringes of Sydney. One night, Goodgod Small Club might host a DJ launching his cookbook. The next, a New Orleans sissy-bounce artist. A bar at the front mixes cocktails, a room at the back holds a tiny nightclub, and its diner, The Dip, has been lauded in The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide. Nightlife proponents such as Clover Moore, FBi Radio and Fergus Linehan say this strange little hybrid basement, decorated like a tropical Flintstones cave, is typical of the after-dark offerings of the future. "It's an age-old formula that exists all around the world - eat, drink, and then have a dance and watch live music - but it feels like there's not a lot of it in Sydney," says the club's co-owner, Jimmy Sing.

"I think it's important for people to come out and be engaged with something more than just drinking." In pockets of the city, great things are happening. Down the road from Goodgod, Chinatown buzzes with night markets, 3am karaoke, queues for Mamak's famous roti and the neon glow of Kimber Lane's hanging sculptures. One month a year, Art & About fills laneways, and public spaces around the CBD with interactive art and galleries stay open late. Vivid and the Sydney Festival First Night attract tens of thousands into areas that are usually dead zones. More than 50 small bars have opened and young publicans Jaime Wirth and James Miller are shaking up the pub scene by ripping out pokies, smartening up food and making old city pubs such as the Norfolk, the Abercrombie, the Flinders and the Forresters cool again. The city is brimming with young entrepreneurs, buoyed by a sense of "can do" that the small-bar movement has encouraged. Mathieu Ravier, the creator of Jurassic Lounge, a weekly after-hours arts program and bar at the Australian Museum that is earning praise from all corners, even sees people returning to Sydney from overseas. After living in seven cities, the Frenchman chose the "fertile ground" of Sydney because, he says, people are incredibly supportive of ideas. "If you have a good idea, the first thing people say is, 'How can I help?' " he says. "In Europe, I found the reaction was the opposite: 'Hasn't it been done before? Are you sure it will work?' " But red tape, regulation and a culture of complaint have stifled much more from happening, says Vivid's Scully, who is travelling between New York and Berlin to write a book about creative economies. "What we have more than any other place I've been is a huge culture of fear of new things and a lack of co-ordination between different levels of bureaucracy," she says. "If you want to stage an opera in the subway, the number of bodies you have to go through is startling. I don't understand the need to control every single thing. I think the most interesting things happen when you break the rules a bit."

Plans for a rooftop cinema in Sydney have been stymied by neighbours' concerns. A simple change to a business's operating hours requires $1000 and mountains of paperwork. Even progressive developments like the recent food trucks, part of the answer to our paucity of late-night dining options, are hamstrung by regulation restricting them to a handful of locations around the city. "We're very over-regulated," says Clover Moore. "But it's a tough nut to crack. We try to walk a fine line between having a city that really sings and one that is responsible." She wants to streamline development applications, relax outdoor dining rules, make the complaints process clearer and replicate Brisbane's "first tenant rights" legislation, which limits the scope for newcomers to complain about pre-existing venues. Sydney could look to Berlin, where street fairs, dance parties and looser laws replaced an iron fist to combat annual violent May Day protests. The public holiday had became a flashpoint for riots in the 1980s which turned violent each year until a new approach was taken in 2005, aiming to distract people from destruction and give them something to revel in rather than rail against. "I have never been denied entry to a club in New York or Berlin but I was always denied in Sydney - wrong shoes, 2am lockout, not enough girls," says one expat, Nic Stone, a writer living in New York. "In other cities I think there is more of a 'How can we make this a great night?' mentality from the government and businesses rather than Sydney's 'How can we make sure nothing goes wrong?' " NSW Assistant Police Commissioner Mark Murdoch strongly supports Clover Moore's Open Sydney plan, which would initially require a change in shift patterns and deployment rather than an increase in police numbers. Five other state government bodies - Transport for NSW, the Department of Planning and Infrastructure, the Office of the Small Business Commissioner, the Department of Trade and Investment and Destination NSW - have offered broad support but scepticism has followed in equal doses.

Transport for NSW has cast doubt on the Council's suite of transport ideas, including 24-hour trains and buses, new routes connecting the city's precincts and extended light rail. Its director general, Les Wielinga, says any change would need to be justified by increased demand, yet his department refuses to provide patronage numbers to show whether the demand is already there, citing commercial confidentiality. His response also doesn't consider that once the services are provided, the people will come. It's a chicken and egg argument that John Lee, the chief executive of the Tourism & Transport Forum, can't see the state government entering. "They like their egg too much," he says. Sydney's sprawl, which prevents a metro-style railway, would make late-night trains too unprofitable to run, he says. The city's train network loses money every hour it's open and this would only get worse at night. Lee proposes a shuttle train between Bondi Junction, Kings Cross and Central supplemented by the NightRide bus network, which replicates the train lines at night, costs a quarter of what it costs to run the trains and is, he believes, "Sydney's best-kept secret". "Address the buses first," he says. "Get some express services in place, run more services and have a campaign to promote them better." To this end, the NSW Government has committed $7.6 million over four years towards increasing NightRide services, including doubling services in busy areas. Its Kings Cross management plan also includes late-night transport solutions such as frequent shuttle buses to Central Station and making it easier for private bus operators to establish routes. "If I was to look at history I would be sceptical of co-operation between different levels of government," Lee says. "Sydney has fallen behind, especially when compared to the way Melbourne activates its CBD at night. If you go to the happening cities of the world, they have a vibrancy because they activate their precincts and allow people to easily get around through the night. Sydney has been good at one-off events but we need to try this new frontier."

It would be an interesting experiment to add one thing to George Street at 11pm: open shops. Would party-goers change their behaviour? Would there be a different crowd on the footpaths? Retailers will potentially play a big part in the Sydney of the future, whether it be opening later or activating their shop fronts at night with creative lighting and pop-up events, but there are challenges. Sydney has traditionally been a city of early risers, reflected in 9am-5pm operating hours, despite demand for shopping hours closer to Berlin's (10am-8pm), or even our Asian neighbours, who shop until 11pm. NSW Small Business Commissioner Yasmin King predicts that our complex system of late-night and weekend penalty rates for retail workers will hamper many shops from opening late and a review may be required. She says it will be difficult to source workers, compounded by a lack of transport options to get to and from work. The experience of some retailers, however, suggests it is possible. During Vivid, one ice-cream vendor sold twice as much at 11pm on a winter's night as he would on a summer's day. On Crown Street in Surry Hills, nestled between grungy barbers, boutiques and bars, one bookshop, like many others in Sydney, stays open until 10pm on weekends. The store manager of Oscar & Friends, William Noble, says they have no trouble finding and funding staff to work nights, which is sometimes double the daytime trade. Most of the night workers use the network of bike lanes to ride to and from work. "The demand definitely makes it worth it," he says. "We mostly get people browsing after dinner. It's just a lovely vibe." Other businesses, however, lack resources. Kon Gouriotis, director of the Australian Centre for Photography in Paddington, says he explored closing at 10pm - "we have to kick people out when we do night-time openings" - but it would require two more staff which, for a free gallery, is too big an ask. Furthermore, Arts NSW says it will not provide funding to help galleries stay open later. The key, Suzie Matthews says, is to pick precincts where it will work and build it around existing events like Vivid. But one question remains: is Sydney mature enough to handle it?

Considering the city's love affair with drunkenness, would say, a 24-hour library most likely be trashed by intoxicated louts, looking for trouble? "I think it's true we drink like animals in Sydney," Matthews says. And 80 per cent of Australians agree, according to a recent study by the Alcohol Education and Rehabilitation Foundation. The death of 18 year-old Thomas Kelly, who was fatally king-hit on his first night out in Kings Cross in July, led to much soul-searching on the city's alcohol problems but to date there have only been minor changes to licensing laws in Kings Cross, such as the introduction of plastic glasses after midnight, a mandatory alcohol-free hour before a venue closes and ID scanners that are linked between clubs. A 24-hour library alone is no silver bullet, and experts say real change requires a raft of action, including better transport, tighter licensing, restricted availability and higher prices for alcohol, education aimed at adolescents, advertising campaigns, parental role-modelling and a healthy dose of personal responsibility. Boredom can be a major factor in excessive drinking - something Goodgod's Jimmy Sing is well aware of. "We try to have different entertainment each night - whether it's a DJ or a garage rock band - so that people are actually engaged and there's a certain bond between them," he says. "If you have a late-night pub where it's just about getting $3 schooners then I can kinda understand why people get restless." There is growing support for anti-clustering legislation to limit the number of licenses granted in heavily concentrated areas like Kings Cross - something the assistant police commissioner supports "five thousand trillion per cent" but which the Office of Liquor and Gaming won't commit to until its own research on liquor licence clustering is completed at the end of the year. "We can't keep going down the same path or we're going to implode," Mark Murdoch says.

Further south down George Street, away from Nick, Robert and Bee's eerie theatre of emptiness, there's not much more to see. Sydney lacks the wander-ability that Vivid and Festival First Night create but which other cities enjoy every night, says Scully. "The problem is there are so many people out on the streets at night but nothing to interrupt their journey other than drinking establishments," she says. "Sydney lacks a street culture where you wander between shops, cafes and bars and just hang out in the street. Even the simplest street lighting or interactive art could enliven a space and give people a reason to stop and talk." Urban sprawl has not worked in Sydney's favour. It means most city workers disperse into the suburbs when they clock off. Matthews says retaining some of the 660,000 workers who leave the CBD each evening will be a challenge. And one worker, Rochelle, who stops to chat to Robert on her way home from work one night, questions whether we're even having the right debate. "Why do we need to be so gluttonous and expect to consume at all hours?" asks the mother of two, who is heading home to switch off her phone, change into her trackies and eat dinner with her family. "If you just keep extending everything, I think it has an impact on society's expectations of work/life balance." Coaxing a city towards the future is a tough task. Rather than cherry-pick the best parts of other cities, Linehan believes Sydney needs to do it with its own flavour. "There's no use saying we should all be in dark, smoky basements wearing black turtlenecks. That's not what Sydney is. It's a city that loves celebration and we've got to find our own way to do it." WHERE TO ...



... read a book

Ariel Booksellers – open until 11pm. 42 Oxford Street Paddington, phone: 9332 4581; 103 George Street, The Rocks; phone: 9241 5622.

Surry Hills Library – open until 8pm Tuesdays and 10.30pm Thursdays. 405 Crown Street, Surry Hills; phone: 8374 6230.

... sing a song

Ding Dong Dang Karaoke – open until 2am week nights and 3am weekends. 7 Randle Street, Surry Hills; phone: 9281 9000.

Big Echo Karaoke – open until 2am week nights and 3am weekends. 104 Bathurst Street, city; phone: 9283 2666. ... bust a move

The Abercrombie – open until 5am Friday-Sunday. 100 Broadway, city; phone: 9280 2178.

Oxford Art Factory – open until 6am Thursday-Saturday. 38-46 Oxford Street, Darlinghurst; phone: 9332 3711. ... have a coffee

Cafe Hernandez – open 24 hours. 60 Kings Road, Kings Cross, phone: 9331 2343)

Cafe Gioia – open until 1.30am Friday to Sunday. 126A Norton Street, Leichhardt; phone: 9564 6245. ... check out some art

Kimber Lane 24-hour laneway art in Chinatown. Slot 24-hour shop-front gallery, 38 Botany Road, Alexandria; slot.net.au.

Art After Hours – open until 9pm Wednesdays. Art Gallery of NSW, the Domain; phone: 9225 1700. ... get a haircut

Dirty Girl – open until 9pm week nights. 230 King Street, Newtown; phone: 9519 1114.

Ziggy's Barber Salon – open "till late" some nights. 183 Riley Street, Darlinghurst; phone: 9267 0057.

... cure a cough

Blake's Pharmacy – open until 11pm weeknights and 9pm weekends. 20 Darlinghurst Road, Potts Point; phone: 9358 6712. Enmore 7 Day Pharmacy Open until 10pm. 211 Enmore Road, Enmore; phone: 9516 3355. ... buy a frock

David Jones – open until 9pm Thursdays and Fridays. Castlereagh Street, city. American Apparel Open until 10pm Thursdays and 9pm Fridays and Saturdays. 82 Oxford Street, Darlinghurst; phone: 9358 2666. ... pump some iron

City Gym – open until midnight weekdays and 10pm weekends. 107-113 Crown Street, city; phone: 9360 6247.Anytime Fitness Open 24 hours, several locations around the city. ... see a movie

Govinda's Restaurant and Movie Room – last screening 9.30pm. 112 Darlinghurst Road, Darlinghurst; phone: 9380 5155. Event Cinemas - George Street Last screening 9.30pm. 505-525 George Street, city; phone: 9273 7300. LATE NIGHT EATS AND DRINKS

Golden Century

Outstanding chow until 4am. 393-399 Sussex Street, Haymarket; phone: 9212 3901. 85°C

Taiwanese cakes until 1.30am on weekends. Shop 9, 545-551 George Street, city; phone: 9264 8585. Bootleg bar + Italian Food

Fine Italian food and drinks until 1am on weekends. 175 Victoria Street, Potts Point; phone: 9361 3884. Mamak

Malaysian food worth lining up for, supper until 2am Fridays and Saturdays. 15 Goulburn Street, Haymarket; phone: 9211 1668. Harry's Cafe de Wheels

Classic pies with mushy peas and gravy until 2am-3am on weeknights and 4am on weekends. Cowper Wharf Roadway, Woolloomooloo; phone: 9357 3074.

Food trucks

Trucking around Sydney at all hours, check Twitter or download the app at sydneyfoodtrucks.com.au The Dip at Goodgod Small Club

American-style dude food in a nightclub/bar, serving until midnight. 55 Liverpool Street, city; phone: 8084 0587. Johnny Wong's Dumpling Bar

Late-night dumplings at The Standard nightclub, until 2am on weekends. 383 Bourke Street, Surry Hills; phone: 9331 3100. Town Hall Hotel

A solid dive bar for early-morning beers, until 4am on weekends. 326 King Street, Newtown; phone: 9557 1206. Low 302

Classy cocktails shaken until 2am. 302 Crown Street, Darlinghurst; phone: 9368 1548.

FIVE SYDNEYSIDERS, FIVE IDEAS ... 1 Leo Schofield, food critic and former Sydney Festival director:"I'd have more restaurant kitchens open past 10pm to cater to people after the theatre or a show. You emerge from the theatre on a bit of a high and your only option is to dine at Burger King and discuss the show." 2 Lucy Turnbull, businesswoman and former Lord Mayor: "Have some kind of video digital art on the buildings in Martin Place after dark. It could really be a fantastic way of activating the space and telling people that the area's not dead at night. At the moment, it's moribund." 3 Anthony Nader, celebrity hairdresser: "Oxford Street in Paddington has died unfortunately, and it is sad to see wonderful businesses close. Make the strip into a mall of alfresco dining and the best Sydney has to offer, which Westfield can't do." Loading

4 Dick Smith, activist and entrepreneur: "Let people climb the Harbour Bridge without approval at night. We all did it when we were 16 and 17 but nowadays there are so many rules and restrictions on everything. If you give young people some outlets for healthy and responsible risk-taking they won't channel it all into drinking." 5 Dominic Knight, Chaser comedian and night-time radio host: "I'm concerned that there are still one or two buildings in the CBD that do not contain a late-night Pie Face outlet. Once this has been rectified, it would also be nice to have other late-night cuisine alternatives. In particular I'd like to see some noodle stands where you can get a decent bowl of ramen at midnight, perhaps even on the street."