We dream in darkness. So, what of the nocturnal city and its capacity for the imagination? As our cities become lighter and brighter, where and when can we envision the future city? Light has become synonymous with progress. It is philosophically bound to ideas of wisdom, goodness, and coherence.Yet light and dark are deployed across urbanl andscapes in different ways including associal control and as symbolic of power. As justification for artificial light at night centres around its economic cost, how do we engage with the other impacts its increased presenceis having. Considered from a different angle, how might we determine the value of darkness in urban situations where access to it is rapidly disappearing. This article exploresthe potential for urban places after dark as a means of thinking and moving through processes of change that could lead towards a more sustainable, diverse, and nuanced futurecity. It takes an approach that rejects notions of completeness and the stretch of the everyday into the nocturnal hours, in favour of enabling the ‘everynight’ to be legible. In doing so, it aims to present a preview of the city at night as a future landscape that is in a process of becoming.