Abstract
The article focuses on the Neapolitan neighbourhood of Vomero, whose most recent transformations can be effectively read through the lenses of retail and consumption geography. In greater detail, the evolution of the neighbourhood will be briefly outlined through a long-lasting look on its retail change, from its urbanization to the current configuration of a fabric modified by new consumption practices, in turn generated by the different demands of (old and new) inhabitants and users. The fieldwork research, which took place on a selected core-area and was articulated into various moments – site visits, with the emotions and perceptions they aroused; mapping, to reconstruct the spatial organisation of retail and entertainment activities; in-depth interviews with privileged witnesses; analysis of local commercial policies – will allow to exemplify how the neighbourhood escapes the simplicity of some urban thesis on local-global dialectic. Even in a micro-space which has been the symbol of innovation and separation from the rest of Naples, the commercial core is disputed among various actors. At the scale of the polarizing nodes of the neighbourhood, the retail changes and the consumption practices – although not induced by top-down project or branding policies – highlight new tensions between forms of innovation and of embeddedness.
Highlights
As a theoretical point of reference, this contribution lies on the branch of urban studies that considers retail and consumption as interpretative keys of changes within cities, and that has been developed in various manners, depending on the different analytical contexts1
The article focuses on the Neapolitan neighbourhood of Vomero, whose most recent transformations can be effectively read through the lenses of retail and consumption geography
The evolution of the neighbourhood will be briefly outlined through a long-lasting look on its retail change, from its urbanization to the current configuration of a fabric modified by new consumption practices, in turn generated by the different demands of inhabitants and users
Summary
As a theoretical point of reference, this contribution lies on the branch of urban studies that considers retail and consumption as interpretative keys of changes within cities, and that has been developed in various manners, depending on the different analytical contexts. In the context of the extensive debate that has developed thanks to the contribution of geographical studies in the English language, urban areas appear amongst the principle topics, to be considered as the context for new ways of interpreting the geographies of retail and consumption (Lowe, Wrigley 2000, 641). The neighbourhood, in that respect, seemed the micro-space suited to exemplify the urban-retail change that, in turn, often represented the result of consumption preferences and changes in the property dynamics, rather than the product of macro-visions of urban planners (Ibidem 1887). This perspective seems to focus on that which still occurs today in the Neapolitan neighbourhood of Vomero. Though renewal and autonomy with respect to the rest of the city have always been distinctive features of the Vomero, the places on which we have decided to focus our attention have recently undergone further changes, which seem harbingers of certain types of renewal and, at the same time, of unprecedented consequences in terms of embeddedness: both are dimensions that can be interpreted in an even more effective manner through the magnifying glass of retail and consumption
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