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Starting from these premises, the aim of the paper is illustrating the role of experience in urban regeneration projects and to explore how the experience of high quality product luxury places can be sustainable with existent place identity or new place identity to be suitably created.

The experience of a place may become an integral part of a product experience. The enhancement of products (Splendiani, 2013): assumes a meaning which goes beyond the simple sale of material goods. It covers the supply of complex experiences … enriched by intangible elements capable to stimulate and involve the sensory and experiential component of consumption. It deals with attracting people to the places where local products are made by inserting the products in the most extensive offers covering the entire territorial system of reference The experience may also be used for the spectacolarisation of a place and its commercialisation, as in the case of “brandscapes” (Klingman, 2007). In this case, it is important not to clone every place everywhere because they could inevitably resemble each other without be able to really engage the people who move into them (Lehtovuori, 2010). The methodology approach is based on a wide bibliography and internet research based on the main terms connected to the topics of the paper, including experience, place identity, quality product, regeneration; on case studies – even though not illustrated – concerning places of interest for the research topics, such as: Hafencity in Hamburg, the Albert Dock in Liverpool, Abondaibarra area in Bilbao.

The planning of places of quality product cannot be separated from interpretation of the territory as a cultural system resulting from an ensemble of historical, economic and social processes. In such a system, the contribution of the cultural factor must be considered propulsive, not only for its qualitative meaning but also, and especially, for the role of “trait d’union” of a number of actions taken to protect and enhance places.

The increasing importance of the use of experience in the urban regeneration process is leading cities to be involved in constructing suitable images and symbols of their transformed areas to meet the new trends, also according with luxurious ones. Even though globalisation is one of the main dangers in innovative itineraries, the proper planning of quality architecture and public spaces could prevent it by creating a suitable mix between innovation and culture.

Based on the research, the authors identify how four key concepts in disaster studies—agency, local scale, memory and vulnerability—are interrupted, and how these interruptions offer new perspectives for doing disaster research from and for the South.

Meta-analysis of case studies and revision of past and current collaborations of authors with communities across Chile.

The findings suggest that agency, local scale, memory and vulnerability, as fundamental concepts for disaster risk reduction (DRR) theory and practice, need to allow for ambivalences, ironies, granularization and further materializations. The authors identify these characteristics as the conditions that emerge when doing disaster research from within the disaster itself, perhaps the critical condition of what is usually known as the South.

The authors contribute to a reflexive assessment of fundamental concepts for critical disaster studies. The authors offer research-based and empirically rich redefinitions of these concepts. The authors also offer a novel understanding of the political and epistemological conditions of the “South” as both a geography and a project.

Cities throughout the world have experienced fundamental social, cultural and economic transformation in recent decades. Socio-cultural and urban identities have been transforming radically; globalization, internationalization and the rapid flow of information, as the case in the rest of the world, have played a significant role in changing cities and their people. These changing dynamics have affected continuity and development trends in urban-housing environments and housing preferences. The multidimensional outcomes of this transformation are manifest in peculiarities of activity patterns, behavioral relationships, and socio-cultural norms, as well as in architectural and urban configurations. These rapid economic and social changes demand continual redefinition of urbanization and housing concerns. Therefore, the main aim of the article that based on ongoing research is to examine implications of urban and architectural transformations in Istanbul with the subjects of economical, cultural and political conditions.

Based on these above arguments, article aims to analyze and discuss the relationship between urban dynamics and new housing developments in Istanbul in the context of transformation process. The article, which consists of five sections, has three sections besides the introduction and conclusion. In the first two part a theoretical framework is established, explaining and discussing culture, continuity and change in the process of urbanization. The second part includes the latest housing trends in Istanbul with the subjects of economical, cultural and political conditions that Turkey is already in and related. The third part examines the emerging patterns of social and cultural differentiation in Istanbul through the examples of the exclusive suburbs At the end, we argue that recent housing projects and trends represent new forms of organizing social and cultural differences, and could be read as urban forms, which create segregation and reproduce inequalities while transforming the character of public life.

This paper aims to monitor the urban landscape through the perceptions of residents and visitors, identifying features that cause visual impacts and providing insights for landscape management decision-makers. Captured impressions about the city whilst moving around are important to assess the satisfaction of city residents and city visitors through key elements, such as directional signage, outdoor advertising, restaurants’ outdoor terrace furniture, urban furniture, green spaces, traffic, cleaning, pedestrian areas, visitor flow and conservation of monuments, museums and buildings.

A survey was applied in the historical Porto city centre (Portugal) to understand residents’ and visitors’ perceptions of the city landscape and assess the differences between these two groups. Cronbach’s alpha was used to assess the reliability of the constructs (dimensions) of urban landscape. Non-parametric Mann-Whitney test was used to find significant differences in the perceptions of residents and visitors.

The results suggest significant differences in the perceptions. Residents value more two constructs of the landscape (heritage conservation and transport mobility) whilst visitors value more other two (pedestrian mobility and aesthetic quality). It is showed that residents have a strong sense of place and are concerned with the conservation of historical heritage. Visitors are more concerned with dimensions intrinsically related to tourism.

This research allowed to fill a gap found in the literature, namely, the importance of considering the perceptions of different actors in the urban landscape monitoring. These results are an important contribution for local authorities to understand the value of urban landscape elements from the perspective of residents and visitors. This study opened the possibility of comparing the results from different historical cities centres.

This study aims to explore the relationship between folk religious place-making and the development of urban public spaces and summarize its influence on community network construction and daily behavior to discover the authentic practices and role of folk faith culture in social space.

Taking Macau's Shi Gandang Temple and its belief culture as an example, on-site research, historical evidence and interviews were used to elaborate and analyze the processes of place-making, social functions, management mechanisms and folk culture to establish a new perception of folk religious place-making in contemporary urban spaces.

The article argues that the culture of folk beliefs profoundly influences urban spaces and the social management system of Macau and has a positive significance in building the local community and geopolitical relations. In addition, it suggests that the participation of folk religious places in local practices is important as key nodes and emotional hubs of local networks, reconciling conflicts between communities of different backgrounds and driving urban spaces toward diversity while forming a positive interaction and friendly cooperation between regional development and self-contained management mechanisms, governance models and cultural orientations.

This study takes an architectural and anthropological perspective of the impact of faith on urban spaces and local governance, using the Shi Gandang Temple in Macau as an example, to complement related studies.

This paper in its first part aims at contextualizing Abu Dhabi's urban development and understanding the factors that have governed its urban growth through a historical case study approach. Relying on archival records and primary sources five stages of urban growth are identified. Data mining of media archives allows for a first hand account of developments taking place thus grounding the depictions. The second part contextualizes this review through a case study of the Central Market project — also known as Abu Dhabi's World Trade Center. The paper concludes by elaborating on the significance of such a historical analysis as it shifts the discourse away from a focus on the ‘artificiality’ of cities in the Gulf to one that is based on a recognition about the historicity of its urban centers, however recent it may be. Additionally the pertinence of such an analysis for cities worldwide is discussed as well.

The nations of Africa, Central and Latin America, and most of Asia are collectively known as the Global South, which includes practically 157 of a total of 184 recognized states in the world according to United Nations reports. Metaphorically, it can be argued that most of the efforts in architectural production, city planning, place making, place management, and urban development are taking place in the Global South and will continue to be so over the next several decades.

This study aims to examine the symbolic meanings of the local shopping malls inscribed by the shoppers from the sociocultural lens other than merely departing from the economic dimensions.

In this research, Kwai Chung Plaza was adopted as the case study. The author interviewed 12 local shoppers through an in-depth individual interview. All interviewees were selected through convenience and snowball sampling. All names of the participants in this paper are kept pseudonymous to protect their privacy.

An integrated model, which consists of three major levels, namely, the spatial, individual and community levels, has been formed to show that the shopping mall was not merely a place for buy-and-sell transactions but rather a place that could be understood as an extension of the street, a body of collective memories and a place for Hongkongers.

The most significant limitation of this study was the lack of a diversified demographic profile adding that the sample was restricted to the young generation. It is recommended that future research should consider including interviews with middle-aged and old-aged shoppers to ensure the generalizability of results. Future research may also consider examining other small/medium-sized shopping malls for comparison.

The findings demonstrated the diversified social roles and functions of the local shopping malls in a community. In addition, the present study, to the author’s knowledge, is one of the few scholarly discussions on small/medium-sized shopping malls from a sociocultural perspective.

The purpose of the present study is to examine how local consumers disassociate themselves from migrants' acculturative practices and negotiate their identity through the symbolic consumption of fashion.

Data for this interpretive study were obtained via phenomenological interviews with locally-born Chinese youth in Guangzhou, China, to examine their acculturative consumption practices as well as their subjective experiences of perceived threats to their lifestyle imposed by the influx of outsiders. Snowballing and purposive sampling methods were adopted in recruiting the research participants.

Data analyses revealed that local consumers adopt three dissociative strategies (stigmatization, avoidance and self-assertion) in order to ascribe meanings to their fashion consumption practices as a means of resolving identity conflicts and differentiate themselves from the migrant consumers.

This research offers a single perspective (i.e. that of local-born young consumers residing in Guangzhou) on the locals' attitudes aimed at distinguishing and negotiating their identities in an intercultural setting via specific fashion-clothing choices. This research has theoretical implications for the consumer acculturation theory and identity negotiation.

Findings yielded by the present study have important implications for commercial companies focusing on fashion consumption, in particular for marketing practices aimed at rural-urban identification and youth market segmentation.

This study contributes to the existing discussion on consumer acculturation by offering an intracultural perspective to the understanding of local consumers' responses to migrants' acculturation. It also provides managerial insights for fashion retailers, prompting them to rethink their market segmentation strategies to address population mobility in the marketplace and better understand how it alters the in-between social relationships that result in different consumption patterns and practices.

This study contributes to the existing discussion on youth consumer acculturation theories by offering an intercultural perspective to the understanding of local consumers' responses to migrants' acculturation attempts. It also offers managerial insights for fashion retailers, prompting them to rethink their market segmentation strategies to address population mobility and better understand how it alters the social relationships that result in different consumption patterns and practices.