It would be easy to imagine the collapse of the motorway bridge in Genoa, which occurred in August 2018, as a sort of unwritten epilogue to this volume. A catastrophic event, with a strong symbolic impact, which swept away the hopes of rebirth for a city, hit first by the deindustrialization in the 1970s and later by the economic and financial crisis of recent years. But it would be a mistake to simplify trivially the outcomes of the extremely complex transformation of Genoa, which deserves to be analysed as a contribution to understanding the dynamics of many European cities over the past four decades. In order to investigate this process, the author of this book, an anthropologist, adopts an original perspective: an ethnographic analysis of the middle classes which embodied the new economy of culture that flourished in Genoa during the 1990s under the sway of neoliberalism. Her aim is to detect the rise of a new experience of the city, which was connected to the transformation of the urban landscape triggered by deindustrialization and the emergence of a new tourist vocation.

In the first chapter, Guano outlines a historical chronology of this process as cycles of hope and disappointment that involved the entire urban community. This transformation began in the 1970s, with the crisis in the steel and shipbuilding industry, which caused a rise in unemployment and an acceleration of the decay of the central district. An urban revitalization followed between the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the millennium, which was characterized by the development of entrepreneurial activities linked mainly to small trades, cultural events and the renovation of the port and city centre. This mobilization has faded nowadays after the disruption of the recent recession, which cancelled many of the hopes of the previous two decades.

In the following chapters, the author highlights some specific questions that are considered particularly significant: the dramatic event of the G8 summit in July 2001, analysed both through the construction of ephemeral spatialities and the long-term effects for the resident population; the gentrification of the historical centre, which took place according to a peculiar process influenced by the characteristics of the building fabric; the cultural and social identities of two professional groups which were protagonists of the urban revitalization in the 1990s: street antique dealers and walking-tour guides; and last but not least, the ethnographic analysis of the Suq, one of the most important multicultural festivals in the life of Genoa.

From this work, based on a knowledge of a wide literature on urban studies, emerge some general interpretative questions that also interest historians. First of all, the need to reconsider the transformations of European cities between the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the millennium in a bottom-up perspective, more attentive to everyday practices and specific characteristics of places, which would warn about the use of interpretative categories moulded on urban experiences in the United States. According to the author, the example of Genoa demonstrates the opportunity to downsize the role of global corporate dynamics in favour of the recognition of the agency of citizens: consumers but also producers of the new economy of culture. Then, the invitation to rethink the evolution of the more educated middle classes, particularly the so-called ‘creative class’, in connection with different local contexts. In this regard, the experience of Genoa highlights significant differences with respect to the North Atlantic model, especially in relation to the economic and social fragility of these middle classes, which legitimizes the author to speak of a ‘residual’ creative class. Finally, the suggestion to reconsider the effects of the advent of neoliberalism in an urban community mostly lacking in social mobility and oppressed by a system of power relations controlled by a small elite. In this perspective, according to the author, beyond the social damages of deregulation, we should also consider that message of hope which came along with neoliberalism as a stimulus to innovation and individual initiative.

Some historians may remain dissatisfied with this ethno-anthropological approach explicitly inspired by the personal experience of the author, a scholar born and raised in Genoa and forced to emigrate to the United States due to lack of job opportunities in her city. They might perhaps be puzzled by the insistence around some long-standing characteristics of Genoese society and the ruling class, which sometimes lack adequate evidence in the documentation. Above all, a more detailed analysis of the real economic weight of this new culture industry would have been useful for the reader. However, apart from some limits, this study is very interesting, particularly for urban historians, because it raises in an original way essential questions into the investigation of the processes of city transformation triggered by the deindustrialization of the late twentieth century.