The Multiplex City

Abstract

This paper deals with the process of urban change that has occurred in the historic centre of Naples during the course of the last decade.The paper takes account of the role played in this process by a number of local actors: the local judiciary, new urban political elites, institutionalized civil society and urban social movements.The first two sets of actors represent what I define as ‘legitimate power’ in the city, while the remaining two groups represent ‘constituent power’. In my account of the process of regeneration in the historic centre of Naples, the former are revealed as protagonists of dynamics of urban change ‘from above’ and the latter of dynamics ‘from below’. The aim of the paper is to contribute to the formulation of a critical perspective on multiplex urbanism, by highlighting the co-existence of multiple dynamics of political mobilization in the public domain of contemporary cities. In particular, the paper tries to show how the mobilization of actors who do not have direct policy commitments of their own can generate productive outcomes on the organization of space. It is argued that these actors not only make claims in the public sphere, but also actively contribute to the dynamics of space production that trigger the processes of spatial change at the urban level.