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Ordinary people living ordinary lives inhabit meaningful spaces; in globalized urban environments, these spaces are vernacular landscapes. Urban spaces are also subject to the effects of social inequality. Class, racial/ethnic, religion, and citizenship hierarchies mark urban territories with differential meanings. Spatial semiotic analysis makes it possible to see even the most powerless of urban dwellers as social agents in the local reproduction of urban culture. The authors argue that sociological analysis of visual data is necessary to understand how urban vernacular neighborhoods are changing as a result of globalization. They present visual data on vernacular neighborhoods in Antwerp, Berlin, Brooklyn, Cape Town, Hong Kong, Lisbon, London, Manchester, Paris, Philadelphia, Rome, St Petersburg, Stockholm, and Tirana. These images are among the 9000+ photographs from more than 40 global cities available from their online archive. Urban spaces are filled with signs of collective identity. In the physical environment, architectural details, commercial signs, and graffiti, among other things, signify the flows of people and culture. So too do social practices, such as commercial transactions, socializing, and commuting in the public spaces of vernacular ethnic neighborhoods. The authors’ analysis, based on hundreds of images in their archive, reveals distinctive visual representations of social differences in vernacular landscapes.

This illustrated paper is the latest in a long series based on visual sociological research which I have conducted about how the meanings of neighbourhood spaces are changed by the agency of even the least of their inhabitants. Specifically, it attempts to demonstrate how the Italian-American character, or version of Italianness (Italianità), of four of New York City's most well-known Little Italies (Mulberry Street and East Harlem in Manhattan, Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, Belmont, Bronx) has been affected by the invasions of new and different ethnic groups. The spatial and semiotic logic of diasporic/transnational processes that have taken place over the course of a century is presented here in the form of scholarly and journalistic reportage, as well as photographic images. All these sources document and illustrate contrasting and changing demography, but here special attention is paid to commercial vernacular landscapes which play a major role in defining the ethnic (in this case Italian) quality of city neighbourhoods. It is also suggested that this Visual Sociological approach might have value if applied in parallel studies of how immigrants are changing the meanings of urban spaces in contemporary Italy.

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