Tuff City: Urban Change and Contested Space in Central Naples (Remapping Cultural History)

This is an important book. In a whole series of ways this study of contemporary Naples will set a bench-mark for urban studies and the way urban history is carried out. It is a book about Naples and thus about the particularities and peculiarities of that specific city. However, this is also a book which goes way beyond Naples itself. It has a lot to tell us about the way the city can and should be studied - about urban studies methodologies - and in this area it is highly original and in some ways sets a new agenda for other researchers, historians, anthropologists, ethnologists, and those using cultural studies approaches. John Foot, University College London

This is one of the best books I have read: beautifully written and extremely well researched (a refreshing mix of archival research and participant observation) and superbly theorized, with an impressive knowledge of the range of urban theory, as well as meticulous historical contextualization. Jo Labanyi, New York University

...[A]n interesting and readable text. It is scholarly, ambitious in scope and well written. Victoria Goddard, Goldsmiths, University of London

During the 1990s, Naples’ left-wing administration sought to tackle the city’s infamous reputation of being poor, crime-ridden, chaotic and dirty by reclaiming the city’s cultural and architectural heritage. This book examines the conflicts surrounding the reimaging and reordering of the city’s historic centre through detailed case studies of two piazzas and a centro sociale, focusing on a series of issues that include decorum, security, pedestrianization, tourism, immigration and new forms of urban protest. This monograph is the first in-depth study of the complex transformations of one of Europe’s most fascinating and misunderstood cities. It represents a new critical approach to the questions of public space, citizenship and urban regeneration as well as a broader methodological critique of how we write about contemporary cities.

Nick Dines lived and worked in Naples for seven years. Formerly a research associate in the Department of Geography at King’s College London, he currently lives in Rome, where he holds teaching positions in urban anthropology and social history at a number of Italian and U.S. universities.