Shopping malls and neoliberal trends in Southern European cities: post-metropolitan challenges for urban planning policy

Abstract

-Whilst shopping malls have been explored at length by critical urban studies, there has been little exploration of their role in restructuring the practice of urban and spatial planning. This article uses the shopping mall as an object of study in the light of the neoliberal trends and post-metropolisation in southern europe, with the aim of exploring challenges for urban governance and planning practice and with a focus on the role of the ongoing economic crisis. a threefold exploratory framework -the 'lost-in-time scenario' , the 'messianic mall model' and the '(im)mature planning explanation' -is used to make sense of the local versions of shopping mall development in Lisbon (Portugal) and Palermo (southern italy). according to findings, we highlight the clash between the multi-scalar nature of shopping malls and the dominance of the municipal scale in regulatory planning frameworks, and the risk that shopping mall development (at least in southern europe) may replicate uneven development patterns, reproducing the pre-conditions of the crisis without helping to overcome it.Keywords: Critical urban studies; comparative planning research; planning cultures; southern european crisis; shopping centres.RESUMO -Centros comerciais e tendências neoliberais nas cidades da europa do sul: desafios pós-metropolitanos para o planeamento urbano. embora os centros comerciais tenham sido estudados a fundo nos estudos críticos urbanos, poucas análises existem sobre o seu papel na restruturação da prática do ordenamento do território e do planeamento urbano. este artigo utiliza os centros comerciais como objeto de estudo, com o objetivo de explorar os desafios para a governança urbana e o planeamento urbano em tempos de tendências neoliberais e pós-metropolitização na europa do sul, questio- Palavras-chave: estudos críticos urbanos; estudos comparativos em ordenamento do território; culturas de ordenamento; crise da europa do sul; centros comerciais. RESUME -Centres commerciaux et tendances néolibérales dans les villes de l'europe du sud : les défis post-métropolitains à une politique de planification urbaine. Bien que les Centres commerciaux aient été étudiés à fond critiquement, il existe peu d'analyses traitant du rôle qu'ils peuvent avoir dans la rénovation de la planification territoriale. Les Centres commerciaux sont ici considérés comme des instruments permettant de comprendre les défis posés, en europe du sud, par la gestion et la planification urbaines, en des temps de tendance néolibérale et post-métropolitaine et en considérant aussi le rôle de la crise économique actuelle. Pour tenter de mieux comprendre les versions locales du succès des Centres commerciaux, tant à Lisbonne qu'à Palerme, on a utilisé un cadre théorique à trois composantes : les types de développement économique se succédant dans le temps, les aspects sociaux-culturels et les types de planification. Ce qui a permis de montrer le conflit existant entre l'aspect multi-scalaire des Centres commerciaux et la dominance de l' échelle municipale...

Shifting Imageries: Gentrification and the New Touristic Images of the Inner City of Palermo

“…It would be a mistake to apply the Anglo-American models of gentrification, urban imagery and place identity to a Southern Mediterranean case like Palermo, without any adaptation. This chapter will, instead, use a postcolonial, comparative approach (Robinson 2011 ) and consider Southern Europe, and Palermo in particular, as a unique and diverse case (Seixas and Albet 2012 ; for additional details on this post-colonial, comparative, Southern European approach to the case of Palermo see Bonafede and Lo Piccolo 2010 ; Picone 2016 ; Tulumello and Picone 2016 ).…”

The “Souths” of the “Wests”. Southern critique and comparative housing studies in Southern Europe and USA

“…This eased a rapid penetration of global capital flows with contradictory implications. On the one hand, these regions have become places of late and turbulent iterations of transformations that had been typical of previous rounds of accumulation elsewhere-see Tulumello and Picone (2016) on the late boom of shopping malls in Southern Europe and their role in fostering dependent development. On the other hand, the European and US Souths have been places of experimentation and innovation in production and exploitation-see Peano (2017) and Palumbo and Sciurba (2018) on the agro-industrial sector in Southern Italy and Spain.…”

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