In Consuming Places, Urry explores the concept of 'society', the nature of 'locality', the significance of 'economic restructuring', and how the concept of the 'rural' are examined in relationship to place.

An overview of the research into consumer behaviour and the use of space, including the internet, identity, connections through commodity chains, commercial culture and morality.

'Visual Consumption' draws from art history, photography and visual studies to develop an interdisciplinary, image-based approach to understanding consumer behaviour.

In investigating the mutual and dynamic relationship between urban development and consumption, this book asks: how are cities moulded by consumption, and how is consumption moulded by cities? Consumption stands at the intersection of different spheres of everyday life: between the public and the private, the political and the personal, the individual and the social. It is considered to be a means and motor of social change; as an active ingredient in the construction of space and place, and in constructing subjectivity and social selfhood. Providing a critical review of the ways in which urban development has been conceptualized, this book critiques urban regeneration initiatives, examines ordinary and spectacular consumption, and describes the relationship between consumption and development of the modern and post-modern city. It investigates: consumption and the city consumption and everyday life consumption, cities and identity consumption and urban regeneration. Consumption is understood to have multiple roles as a political, economic and cultural touchstone, and to be an active ingredient in the construction of place and space. Using international case studies and illustrations throughout, this book thoroughly analyzes consumption and the city, and provides a useful text for students of urban studies, sociology and geography.

Departing from a survey on the post-modern landscapes of tourism, this book explores the transformations the city has undergone and the way it has become a simulacrum offered to tourists, spectacularised with the aim of increasing its capacity for attraction. The experiences dealt with in the papers of authors belonging to different disciplinary fields, emphasise the city’s tendencies to create “stage-set contexts” of the private type, be it historic quarters, theme parks or hypermarkets. Issues like aestheticisation, thematisation and genericity are dealt with, conceptual categories that highlight the weak resistance cities put up against the rules of the leisure industry and, more generally speaking, the consumer economy. The book inquires into the capacity of the urban and territorial project to construct a perspective for a public dimension of space. This is linked with ethical action of the project involving an active relationship with places and a capacity to understand the dynamics of different urban populations. In this sense capacity for innovation and creativity can contribute to transforming “islands” of leisure into places of the city and consumers into citizens.

Post-Mao China has been characterized in literature and the media as a burgeoning consumer society. Consuming China investigates this characterization by examining the cultural significance of consumption and consumerism in the People’s Republic of China today. In questioning the notion of consumption, this impressive work suggests that it is not simply a symptom of economic reform within China neither a product of the emergence and transformation of contemporary Chinese capitalism. Rather, the essays offer a new perspective on Chinese consumption by focusing on more than just consumerism, looking at the practices of consumption in relation to different manifestations of social and cultural change. Drawing on case studies from Taiwan, Hong Kong and the People’s Republic of China, Consuming China affords a greater understanding of the practice of Chinese consumption and will appeal to China scholars and anthropologists, and to those with an interest in cultural and gender studies.

Food occupies a seemingly mundane position in all our lives, yet the ways we think about shopping, cooking and eating are actually intensely reflexive. The daily pick and mix of our eating habits is one way we experience spatial scale. From the relationship of our food intake to our body-shape, to the impact of our tastes upon global food-production regimes, we all read food consumption as a practice which impacts on our sense of place. Drawing on anthropological, sociological and cultural readings of food consumption, as well as empirical material on shopping, cooking, food technology and the food media, this book demonstrates the importance of space and place in identity formation. We all think place (and) identity through food - we are where we eat!