Contested Urban Bodies

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.