The Territorialisation of a Pedestrian Precinct in Malmö: Materialities in the Commercialisation of Public Space

Abstract

This paper sets out to describe and conceptualise four different ways of investigating material stabilisation involved in the territorialisation and commercialisation of a centrally located pedestrian precinct. In recent decades, Swedish retail areas have tended to grow larger and more visible; a large number of new large shopping areas have been established on the outskirts of cities, whereas stores in the city centre tend to be concentrated in certain streets or pedestrian precincts. This paper investigates the case of Malmö. Malmö has been quite successful during the past decade in terms of retail business and the on-going pedestrianisation has resulted in a large and coherent pedestrian precinct, consolidating the city centre as a shopping district. On the basis of an empirical investigation, the paper discusses how this urban type (and its paraphernalia) has developed in Malmö and how it has stabilised over recent decades as a `territory for shopping'. This territorialisation has also been accomplished by material means. The main aim of this discussion is to investigate the delegations and mediations involved in the process. In so doing, a spatial perspective on materialities is proposed, discussing networks, bodies, framings and sorts, as four intersecting ways in which materialities can be described as having territorial impacts on the everyday life and culture of the pedestrian precinct.

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