Critical Reflections on Regeneration, Retail and Consumption: Naples as a Fragmented City

The paper focuses on some critical aspects of the relationship between governance, urban regeneration, changing consumerscapes and the transformation of the retail sector in Naples. This Mediterranean city, even if connoted by a strong and vivid image, nowadays stands as a semi-periphery in the urban competition at the global scale and within the national urban hierarchy. Despite the weak capabilities in reformulating its position in the current competition, Naples represents a stimulating case-study when considering the coexistence of the social and economic crisis with a still vivid urban and cultural image. This city is currently living a season of not regulated attractiveness, where a new need of places and some innovations emerging in the crisis of the retail sector produce some fragmented and diversified forms of consumption-led regeneration. We emphasize the critical aspects of the relation between projects, actors and urban regeneration processes connected to retail and consumption through some examples, which point out three strategic issues: 1) natural shopping centres (Centri Commerciali Naturali): resistence/resilience; 2) luxury streets: patrimonialization/standardization; 3) street markets: public/private spaces.