Bio, vintage, hand-made: strumenti di rivitalizzazione urbana e turistica del centro città

This work aims at analysing the effects in terms of urban and tourist regeneration produced on the city centre by new consumption spaces, different from both global chains and family-run businesses. Recently, several non-conventional leisure spaces (organic food restaurants, vintage shops, hand-made workshops or hybrid consumption spaces such as concept stores or bookshops/cafés) have been fostering the revitalization of socio-economic and urban fabric of central areas. They often impose themselves as creative and cultural clusters destined to a specific target of inhabitants, city-users and tourists, usually very close to the prototype of the gentrifier. Inserted in the wider theoretical and methodological frame of retail gentrification, the work aims at evaluating the impact produced on tourism attractiveness by leisure and retail spaces inspired to the concept of creativity, through the analysis of two case studies situated in the historic centre of Catania (Italy).