Consumption and encounter in (multi)cultural quarters reflecting on London and Rome’s ‘Banglatowns’

Abstract

The paper aims at introducing some critical views on ‘multicultural quarters’, reflecting on the cases of Spitalfields in London and Torpignattara in Rome. Urban practices and policies that led these places to be recognised as ‘Banglatowns’ are explored, disentangling two major narratives of multicultural quarters, respectively, commodification of diversity and everyday multiculturalism. Whether literature tends to establish an opposition between these interpretative frameworks, the paper argues that context-based research shows how both categories are interlaced. The coexisting aspects of commodification of ethnicity and encounter are explored, focusing on the human and spatial agents supporting the construction of the image of the (multi)ethnic quarters.