Consumption and Retail in Urban Spaces: Studies on Italy and Catalonia

Rosario Sommella

doi:10.36253/bsgi-1263

Abstract

The article, based on the scientific results of the last phase of the project “Retail, Consumption, and the City: Practices, Planning and Governance for Urban Inclusion, Resilience and Sustainability”, proposes further reflections on the changing urban landscapes of retail and consumption through studies on Italy and Catalonia. This stage of the research project has been aimed at investigating – through specific in-depth studies (thematic or related to case studies) – aspects not adequately dealt with in the published volumes of the seven research units, or even to take inspiration from themes and cases already dealt with to advance in a reflection that could contribute to build a further piece of a new research agenda on retail, consumption, and the city. By cross-referencing descriptive evidence and theoretical reflections, the article traces the main themes of this special issue, with regard to the evolutionary and, in some cases, analytical trajectories starting as from the different case studies analyzed, all aimed at reflecting on the relationship between consumption, retail and urban spaces in Italy and Catalonia at different scales.

Highlights

When we developed the idea of this publishing project, even brief summaries of the research seemed to be significant in offering a cross-section of the retail and consumption’s dynamics in some paradigmatic Italian and Catalan urban spaces
Right from the early stages of the project, it seemed important to us to focus attention, in a perspective of international comparison, on Italian urban spaces and on the multidimensionality of the phenomena that have characterized them in recent times, using retail and consumption as interpretative keys of the changes in the centres and
Many of the reflections we have developed have, in some ways been overtaken by events: the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on retail and consumption activities are not yet fully clear, and are still being produced at this stage, it is certainly a new challenge for those urban landscapes that have already been so profoundly altered by the dynamics that we analysed in this issue5

Summary

Introduction

Right from the early stages of the project, it seemed important to us to focus attention, in a perspective of international comparison, on Italian urban spaces and on the multidimensionality of the phenomena that have characterized them in recent times, using retail and consumption as interpretative keys of the changes in the centres and

Results

Conclusion