This article examines the relationship between the planning system and crime and security in the night time city. It argues that the planning system was constrained by a neo-liberalist insistence on land-use planning in the 1980s and early 1990s, thereby providing the institutional framework for deregulation of the numbers, capacities, and types of licensed premises in town and city centers. This had a direct impact on levels of crime, violence, and antisocial behavior. The reintroduction of spatial planning by the New Labor Government has allowed planners to introduce social and environmental objectives into their development plans, and changes to the use of class orders provide a greater degree of regulatory control. The new regulatory framework can, given sufficient resources, provide the means by which more obvious physical sources of the generators of antisocial behavior can be avoided. However, this more progressive agenda will face significant challenges from the global economic downturn. Figure and references