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Purpose – This chapter examines individual and collective quests for authenticity, as experienced through consumption activities within an urban neighborhood. It investigates the interplay between consumption experiences as authenticating acts and authoritative performances (Arnould & Price, 2000), and considers the implications with regard to Zukin's (2010) theories on urban authenticity, and how it may be experienced as new beginnings and origins.

Methodology – The chapter is based on autoethnographic research that explores how interaction and identity definition within servicescapes can work to construct place-based community.

Findings – It describes how a servicescape of new beginnings offered opportunities for individual authentication that also enabled personal identification with a specific cultural group. This authentication drew on the cultural capital embedded in such locations, including their association with gentrification. This is contrast with the collective identification offered by a servicescape operating as a place of exposure. This site of origins displayed the social practices of a different demographic, which worked to highlight a relational link between the authentication practices of the broader neighborhood. These sites also worked cumulatively, to highlight the inauthenticities within my identification practices and offer opportunities for redress. Through this interplay it was possible to establish an authentic sense of neighborhood that drew on its new beginnings and its origins, and was both individual and collective.

Originality – Through the combination of urban and consumption-based perspectives of authenticity, and an autoethnographic methodology, this chapter offers a different insight into the ways identification with, and attachment to, a neighborhood can develop through consumption experiences.

This chapter brings new knowledge on the effects of transformation in metropolitan and urban ruralities, as well as focus on social sustainability in these localities. The case study Sundom, Vaasa, Finland, highlights areas under pressure of transformation. ‘Metropolitan ruralities’ is used here as an umbrella concept, subdivided into metropolitan ruralities and smaller (non-metropolitan) urban ruralities. Qualitative and quantitative research methods are combined in a triangular study. An octagon figure (Fig. 4), including the main variables of the triangular study, is configured, to visualize different variables as a whole. The statistical material is more limited in urban ruralities – for example fewer property trades, less inhabitants and fewer voters – which make these case studies more vulnerable for the impact of extremes. The core of the chapter is to study how and if current global trends in metropolitan ruralities are visible in localities further down the urban scale. A stricter rural gentrification is expected in metropolitan ruralities than in urban ruralities, as the Sundom case exemplifies transformation with mild gentrification. Both metropolitan and urban ruralities are considered ‘breeding grounds’ for new rurban identities, with variations on an urban-rural scale. Metropolitan ruralities are expected to attract more exurbanite migrants, and urban ruralities attract more ‘exruralite’ migrants. This chapter also outlines some practical and social implications, argues for strengthening social sustainability in metropolitan ruralities and puts some much needed focus on transformation in metropolitan as well as non-metropolitan urban ruralities.

The forests of eastern Paraguayan have been cleared, forcing the indigenous Mbyá-Guaraní to take refuge in cities. Rather than assimilate into the city’s underclass as other indigenous people do, Mbyá remain on the margins of the national society and protest their land loss in increasingly public demonstrations against the government. This research points to the historical struggle that the Mbyá-Guaraní of eastern Paraguay have waged against the state to explain Mbyá identity and action in the urban environment.

Recent work with indigenous refugees shows that dislocation entails not only a disruption of social ties, but efforts to reestablish identities and relations in their new conditions. This research explores the interplay of urban conditions and historic struggles in the development of these new indigenous identities for the Mbyá-Guarani.

Indigenous refugees in extreme poverty are a growing problem in urban Latin America. Once residents of the forest, these groups squat in vacant lots and scavenge for a living, ravaged by disease, drugs, alcohol, and sex work. This work seeks to identify the factors that lead some indigenous people to integrate into urban society, while others assert themselves against that system.

The urbanization process that develops in parallel with the increase in population, get volume in vertical level on the ground today just like the underground expansion of urban spaces in antique ages, in parallel with the intensification of spatial expansion, leading to new problems and research questions in urban spaces. Because the increase in the number of people per square meter as a result of vertical concentration on the ground makes the streets or the land we step on become a more rentable market. While this market has been filled with classical artisan businesses so far, street economy actors serve the population (consumer) where artisans are not sufficient for meeting the demand in highly populated streets. This situation confronted law enforcement and street sellers in cities for decades or may be centuries, and urban peace and harmony often deteriorated. In the integrated urban areas, in addition to a series of urban problems, the registration of the informal economy and the adaptation of the street economy actors to the urban identity and esthetics have become the problems that await priority solutions. Street economy is an aesthetic and ergonomic fact of living cities, in accordance with this microeconomic reality, sustainable legal regulations are essential. Such that, these legal regulations should be established on a solid basis not only in certain countries but also in all countries in the world.

This chapter discusses how an urban regeneration process, with culture as an economic asset, can contribute to creating a city brand and identity for the city of Mestre, a new habitat, and economic opportunities for the local community, as well as helping neighboring Venice tackle overtourism. This chapter highlights that places suffering from undertourism often are located closely to those suffering from overtourism. Urban regeneration policies driven by culture can be a key solution for both places, by creating a new future, identity, and economic opportunities for one community and for the other, in helping to regulate their touristic flows.

Cities are the place where people spend the great majority of their daily time. Many cities face a variety of social issues such as: high unemployment, increasing crime rate, migration flows, shifts in types of social interactions and lifestyle. These examples represent only a few of the issues encountered. Increasing the number of cultural offerings of a city may help improve the population's general sense of well-being as well as to increase its attractiveness for investments. However, the topic is delicate, and culture is an asset that must be treated carefully. Hence, enhancing culture as a positive asset to be cultivated may seem to be the perfect solution to overcome these issues. Often, a city's government will assume that enhancing and supporting cultural and creative industries will provide a solution to urban socio-economic crises and the stress of the urban fabric without effectively considering their own particular historical-geographical and socio-political conditions. Sometimes cultural heritage is exploited without giving due consideration to the creative sources of value generation in the city. Thus, this may lead to side effects such as the general risk of attracting socially and economically unsustainable mass tourism; the risk related to the possibility of being trapped by city's own cultural heritage and history acting as obstacles against any possible innovations; the risk of gentrification with a consequential loss of important traditions and social relationships characterising the urban areas.

Luxury fashion brands have started differentiating their investment strategies and enlarging their sectors of activity, for instance, entering tourism. The overlay between traditional behaviors and innovative strategies has left a mark on the cities and neighborhoods. This chapter explores the spatial distribution of luxury tourism infrastructure in Milan. This transition does not affect only preeminent locations, such as monumental squares and high streets, but also places traditionally excluded from the “luxury circuits.” The location of 5-star hotels and premium tourism facilities in Milan (Michelin restaurants and spas) differ from the general tourism infrastructure. The study identifies polarization in the touristic offer and a parallel influence in the real estate market.

This paper addresses the mutual interdependence of ethnic identity politics and conservative religious affiliation. Called “traditionalism” in this paper, conservative religious affiliation is seen to appeal most to ethnically homogenous communities who have arrived in the United States from Spanish Catholic countries and who draw on the ethnic identity conveyed by traditionalism to deliberately define themselves at a critical distance from the dominant resident culture, called “Anglo-Protestantism” in this paper.

This chapter explores the class identities of upwardly mobile and middle-class members of racial minorities in France and the United States. Through in-depth interviewing with African Americans and descendants of North African immigrants in, respectively, the United States and France, and comparing these with their counterparts of the racially dominant group, the chapter shows that racial processes significantly shape the mobility experiences and the range of dilemmas, challenges and identity negotiations faced by our minority respondents. Drawing on the Critical Race Theory and on the minority culture of mobility theory (Neckerman, Carter, & Lee., 1999), it suggests that the ongoing salience of racial discrimination coupled with the maintenance of ties with socially disadvantaged members of their groups significantly shape the ways in which our respondents make sense of their class location. The chapter further points to under-researched nation-specific ideological repertoires in shaping our respondents’ mobility experiences and class identities.