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Le secteur du logement constitue une entree pertinente pour comprendre le contexte actuel de diffusion de l’austerite. C’est particulierement vrai pour les pays du sud de l’Europe et notamment l’Italie, qui conservent des caracteristiques specifiques en matiere de logement et de welfare. Cet article explore les nouveaux usages de la propriete qui se developpent pour faire face a l’austerite, et notamment la diffusion des locations de courte duree sur les plateformes en ligne (Airbnb et similaires). Apres un cadrage sur les specificites de la ville de Turin, notre cas d’etude, on se focalisera sur le quartier populaire de Aurora, au Nord du centre-ville, et sur la geographie locale des locations temporaires. Il s’agira d’etudier les diverses formes de rente urbaine qui s’elaborent dans les pratiques quotidiennes en contexte d’austerite, en particulier au sein des classes moyennes. L’analyse des entretiens permet d’interpreter ces comportements comme des strategies de contournement du quotidien de la crise. La conclusion porte sur les implications a long terme de ces pratiques, en particulier pour ce qui concerne la structure urbaine et la reproduction des inegalites sociales, tout en suggerant de nouvelles pistes de recherche.

There is a growing scholarly consensus over the transformation of the urban public place from a challenging, conflicting and negotiated one to a festive and convivial place. Decades of gentrification, renewals and city branding have fostered an urban form made of well-regulated and controlled islands of publicness in a sea of privatopias. Beyond structural forces, urban policies and the action of households and citizens, a key role has been played by global architecture and design. With this chapter, we will address this issue looking precisely at the practices of conceiving and designing the public places by urban designers. How the ideals of a cosmopolis, urban and democratic, is put in place by professionals dealing with neoliberal constraints, post-democratic states and refined middle-class users? What is the contemporary meaning of cosmopolitanism, when related to the urban core? Cosmopolitanism for whom, under which conditions? The chapter will provide a case-study detailed analysis of the perspective of urban designers towards projects and urbanism, with a specific attention to public space design.

The chapter addresses the professional and intellectual field of urban design, increasingly crucial in shaping the urban public space and closely intertwined with major architectural project. Firstly, it argues the connection of urban design with the contemporary urban fabric and its recent changes, giving special attention to the transformation of the field through different contexts, times and scales. Then, the chapter gives room to the voices and points of view of European professionals involved in projects of urban design, discussing the field and the profession. Viewing this emerging though not autonomous field of practice helps understanding recent urban transformations and the position of star architecture.

Within the growing amount of literature on short-term rentals, which has started to increase in the past three years, research has focused mainly on world tourism cities, and intuitively on the cores of cities. Additionally, the economic actors serving as suppliers in the short-term rental sector are too often taken for granted. While existing research confirms the growing presence of real estate agencies and transnational investors who own or manage a significant number of apartment buildings with a purely corporate aim, what is more controversial is that which happens on the other side of the market: local homeowners becoming short-term rental sector suppliers. Focusing on the Italian city of Turin, the article contributes to this debate by exploring the profiles and economic lives of middle-class Airbnb ‘hosts’. Drawing on a set of in-depth interviews, the article provides a categorization of different types of, what we call, ‘marginal hosts’, and an analysis of their specificities and narratives. The study, carried out at a neighbourhood level, shows that the interplay between post-crisis austerity, which has impacted on occupations and income, homeownership and platform capitalism have provided new value-extraction opportunities. We will conclude by arguing that social class should be more specific to the analysis of short-term rental sectors, simultaneously underlining the need for further systematic research on suppliers.

Studies of urban segregation have proliferated since the 1990s, spurred by debate on the impact of globalization on the socio-spatial structure of cities. Some studies have found segregation to increase in post-Fordist cities, either taking the form of socio-spatial ‘dualization’ (SASSEN, 1991) or a ‘fragmentation’ affecting all social categories that goes so far as to threaten the very existence of the city as a political community (SANTOS, 1990; MARCUSE and VAN KEMPEN, 1999; SOJA, 2000; BEN...

Depuis les annees 1990, les etudes sur la segregation urbaine se sont multipliees, relancees par le debat autour de l’impact de la globalisation sur la structure socio-spatiale des villes. Certaines etudes ont conclu a une augmentation de la segregation dans les villes post-fordistes, que cette derniere prenne la forme d’une « dualisation » socio-spatiale (SASSEN, 1991), ou d’une « fragmentation » touchant toutes les categories sociales au point de menacer l’existence meme de la ville comme c...

On the night of 14 June 2017, a 24-storey skyscraper in North Kensington, London, caught fire, leaving 71 people dead and hundreds homeless. Grenfell Tower was a public housing block, built in the early 1970s in Brutalist style, which underwent a controversial refurbishment in 2016. This tragedy in one of the richest areas of one of the richest cities on earth points to a contemporary paradox: the need for more affordable housing is far from being behind us and, indeed, is returning to the fore as a social problem. Our starting point is that housing policies in most European societies have gradually reduced their scope and, breaking with the post-war tradition of cross-class mass housing, are now limited to supporting the more vulnerable households. One of the many effects of this public policy transformation is that public intervention is now conceived as marginal, leaving the market as the main vehicle for service provision (housing, in this case). A second effect can be seen in public facility maintenance: cost cutting has trumped improvements. The Grenfell Tower fire draws attention to several aspects. Here, we will focus on three: the rise of a homeowners’ society, the link between social inequalities and housing, and the financialization of housing. The article suggests the need for a radical shift in housing policies, tackling the nexus between inequality reproduction, extraction mechanisms, and living conditions.

Per chiunque si occupi di economia e mobilità sociale, consumi e cultura, stili di vita e gusti, l’osservazione dei comportamenti del ceto medio è la chiave per comprendere appieno l’impatto della crisi. Sulla scorta di un’ampia e articolata ricerca condotta tra le famiglie italiane, questo volume mette sotto la lente d’ingrandimento le scelte di consumo, in riferimento a tre ambiti specifici: la casa, l’alimentazione e i consumi culturali. Sono così illustrate le odierne strategie di distinzione e appartenenza sociale e la loro complessa negoziazione attraverso rinunce e concessioni, resistenza e innovazione.

In Italy, as in other southern European countries, both the notions of diversity and multiculturalism have only recently come into use. In this article, we show how over the last 30 years two Italian cities, Turin and Naples have been transformed and reshaped by patterns of mobility and informal commerce that we have referred to as ‘shadow circuits’. Shadow circuits work through the connection of distant places in Europe and the Mediterranean and contribute to the understanding of complex, stratified societies, mobile societies in particular. A mobile ethnography perspective has been carried during fieldwork and is discussed in length in this article. The examples of Turin and Naples are particularly useful because, unlike many other Italian cities, both have developed pro-multiculturalism and pro-diversity policies in the last two decades. This makes them particularly interesting case studies for addressing the gap between diversity as a policy and diversity as a social fact.

The considerations we wish to make here arise from a profound dissatisfaction with the current debate on multiculturalism. We perceive that there is a growing gap between the main ways of reading and interpreting the presence of difference in contemporary society and what we see, hear and at times experience in our field work. The current debate on multiculturalism often seems to acquire an ideological character which tends more to indicate how we would ideally like things to be, as in the case of the approaches of political philosophy and social policy, rather than attempting to represent it by looking at the dynamics, the tensions, the intentions and the meanings of those who produce it in their daily lives. In this chapter we will then follow a double path: in first stance we will highlight the theoretical positive foundations of our conception of “Everyday Multiculturalism”. Then, we will sketch briefly “ambiguity” and “space” as two key dimensions through which exploring the empirical making of multicultural societies

Being insulted, teased or mocked is a normal interactional style in the open-air market of Porta Palazzo in Turin, northwestern Italy. It is a place where one can expect easily to get back home with a bag full of cheap vegetables and a head full of questions about what went on when all the vendors were laughing at you during your last haggle.

Depuis les annees quatre-vingt-dix, le quartier de Porta Palazzo a Turin est touche par un processus de « gentrification ». A partir de deux observations, l’auteur met en relation ce processus urbain et certains echanges marchands qui impliquent un commercant berbere de nationalite marocaine et certains de ses jeunes clients italiens. Il privilegie les relations marchandes qui se construisent sur des quiproquos. Au-dela de la materialite de l’objet, certains clients italiens « achetent » ce qui, a leurs yeux, a valeur de « culture marocaine ». Ou bien, ils refusent la transaction qui leur est proposee, invoquant leurs propres valeurs culturelles et politiques, en l’occurrence, ici, des principes ecologiques qui desapprouvent la consommation d’ivoire. L’ethnographie de ces « faillites » enrichit la comprehension de l’espace marchand en tant que lieu ou se tissent les relations sociales entre des acteurs aux trajectoires differentes que des mutations urbaines mettent en contact.