ABSTRACT
Consumption lies at the very heart of the contemporary city. As Pimlott (2007: 9) puts it, the city appears to have become an object of the ideology of consumer capitalism, ‘a distended … scene of consumption’. The significance of consumption in the urban realm lies not solely with its symbolic value, but also in how it is predicated upon new forms of material organisation and the ways in which we as citizens of contemporary society move through the urban landscape in light of those new forms (Kärrholm 2012). But in many ways urban theory’s engagement with consumption in the city lies at a crossroads.
