The Negotiated City Image: Symbolic Reproduction and Change through Urban Consumption

The article presents an analysis of how consumption contributes to the continuous negotiation between locality, market dynamics and image-creation in a metropolitan area. Approaching consumption in terms of encoding and decoding processes, the aim is to stress both how the city is objectively created and how it is interpreted. Focusing upon the principal distinctions between dominant, oppositional and negotiated modes of consumption, the article illuminates the symbolic struggle that permeates urban development. The findings underscore the self-generating character of contemporary urban image-making. The empirical study combines quantitative and qualitative data: a Swedish market survey and an interview study from Goteborg, Sweden.