Abstract
This paper aims at scrutinizing from an historical perspective the deep transformations shaped by retail spaces and new consumption patterns challenging long-entrenched dichotomies, such as the centre-periphery one. In particular, the exploratory research explores the territorial reconfiguration of the main Eastern Sicily metropolitan areas, Catania and Messina, from the lens of the retail geography, namely after the diffusion of new suburban retail formats which have completely upset deeply-rooted relations between urban core and suburban rings.
Highlights
Over the last decades, shopping has become one of the major driving forces which have been reshaping city morphology, functions and hierarchy, by fostering unprecedented relations between the urban core and suburban rings (Barata-Salgueiro, Cachinho 2011)
This paper aims at scrutinizing from an historical perspective the deep transformations shaped by retail spaces and new consumption patterns challenging longentrenched dichotomies, such as the centre-periphery one
This paper aims at evaluating the impact of new retailing spaces and patterns in the two metropolitan areas of Eastern Sicily, Catania and Messina, in order to scrutinize to what extent they have reshaped local territorial hierarchies
Summary
Over the last decades, shopping has become one of the major driving forces which have been reshaping city morphology, functions and hierarchy, by fostering unprecedented relations between the urban core and suburban rings (Barata-Salgueiro, Cachinho 2011). As Crewe puts it (2000, 275) “retail geography has come to occupy a central position within social-scientific research” insofar as places, spaces and practices of consumption are embedded within new theoretical and methodological frameworks of economic geography (Crang 1996) This is principally due to the fact that “ is shopping melting into everything, but everything is melting into shopping [...] Shopping is the medium by which the market has solidified its grip on our spaces, buildings, cities, activities, and lives. The impressive transformation of consumption practices, retail spaces and related territories concerns peripheral economies, where new shopping experiences have been recently affecting old-established territorial structures and relations This is the case of Sicily, where over the last decades consumptionscapes have been increasingly altered by the emergency of new retail formats, which have completely reshaped local territorial hierarchies, in the eastern part of the island. The paper can provide significant insights into past and current dynamics shaping centre-periphery relationship, apart from fresh reflections about the post-Covid potential evolution
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