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FrancoAngeli Journals

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No. 4 (2022)

What do we really talk about when we talk about foodification? Reflections from Porta Palazzo neighbourhood in Turin, Italy

  • Samantha Cenere
  • Panos Bourlessas
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3280/rgioa4-2022oa14997
Submitted
novembre 22, 2022
Published
2022-12-20

Abstract

The opening of a food hall of the Mercato Centrale brand and new spaces dedicated to food consumption in the Porta Palazzo area in Turin have been interpreted by some local residents, academics and commentators as a possible vehicle for retail gentrification. The area, characterized by the presence of a historical market and by conditions of widespread socio-economic vulnerability, is affected by transformation processes that seem in line with the foodification, that the literature evidences in areas where new geographies of food consumption exert a ‘displacement pressure’ to the local low-income population. However, the article shows how a more careful analysis of the ongoing processes highlights, on the one hand, the ability of contextual factors to exert a ‘resistance’ towards transformation and, on the other, the limits of foodification both as a process of urban transformation that produces gentrification and as an analytical concept.

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