"Peripheries and Practices of Consumption in the Naples Metropolitan Area"

The article analyzes the impact of the new attractors of shopping and leisure in the suburbs of the Metropolitan Area of Naples. After an introduction on the different features of today’s suburbs, the focus shifts on the transformations in the area to the north of Naples along an important axial highway (the Circumvallazione, officially the SP1). This axial road, as well as the so-called “median axis” (Asse Mediano), are analyzed as retail and consumption spaces. This case study demonstrates the complex reality of a suburb too hastily considered as uniform and anonymous: although in this area there is chaos, decay and forms of illegality, it is also characterized by a relative centrality thanks to new retail and consumption spaces which represent key-places for their users, places where the rhythm of life is slowed down and socialisation is somewhat recovered.