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The historic centre of the southern European city of Naples has been shaped by opposing urban processes throughout the 2010s and into the 2020s. On the one hand, touristification has led to the financialisation of housing, the displacement of inhabitants and everyday commerce, and the enclosure of public space. On the other, the proliferation of commoning practices by the Liberated Spaces or Beni Comuni and the parallel experimentation with a distinctive form of new municipalism has reclaimed urban space for collective use and social functions. The Liberated Spaces are a network of communities that have emerged since 2012 through the occupation and reappropriation of abandoned public buildings. Today, they are self-governed by inhabitants through assemblies.
Through in-depth ethnographic research with these communities, this book explores the everyday production of liberated spaces in the heart of the tourist zone. Moving from the bodies of activists to the body of the city and back, and with an eye to its past histories as recalled through the memories of its inhabitants, it traces the emergence of urban bodies contested between diverging trajectories and possible futures for Naples.
List of contents
PART I: CONCEPTS, METHODOLOGIES AND CONTEXT.- CHAPTER 1: In the tight space of a single body.- CHAPTER 2: The Urban Body: Tourism as the Ultimate Redemption of Naples Underbelly?.- CHAPTER 3: New Municipalism, Commons, and Tourism: Contested Urban Politics in 2010s Naples and at the Turn of the 2020s.- PART II: THE PRODUCTION OF LIBERATED SPACES IN THE HEART OF THE TOURIST CITY.- CHAPTER 4: Memories and Genesis of the Liberated Spaces.- CHAPTER 5: We reconstruct the places of construction of communities.- CHAPTER 6: Ethnography of the Liberated Spaces in the Tourist City.- CHAPTER 7: New contested urban subjectivities in a tourist monoculture.
About the author
Martina Locorotondo
has completed her PhD in Urban Studies at the Centre for Urban Research on Austerity (CURA), De Montfort University of Leicester (UK), and is in a Postdoc position at the Gran Sasso Science Institute, L'Aquila (Italy). Her research focuses on current processes of urban transformation, resistance and alternative space-making.
Summary
The historic centre of the southern European city of Naples has been shaped by opposing urban processes throughout the 2010s and into the 2020s. On the one hand, touristification has led to the financialisation of housing, the displacement of inhabitants and everyday commerce, and the enclosure of public space. On the other, the proliferation of commoning practices by the Liberated Spaces or Beni Comuni—and the parallel experimentation with a distinctive form of new municipalism—has reclaimed urban space for collective use and social functions. The Liberated Spaces are a network of communities that have emerged since 2012 through the occupation and reappropriation of abandoned public buildings. Today, they are self-governed by inhabitants through assemblies.
Through in-depth ethnographic research with these communities, this book explores the everyday production of liberated spaces in the heart of the tourist zone. Moving from the bodies of activists to the body of the city and back, and with an eye to its past histories as recalled through the memories of its inhabitants, it traces the emergence of urban bodies contested between diverging trajectories and possible futures for Naples.
