Las "lentas" transformaciones de los espacios centrales de Nápoles

The aim of the paper is to outline some of the transformations that in the last 20 years have characterized the central areas of Naples, a city that in many ways seem to resist to change, and this occurs seemingly "slow". The intention is also to evaluate how the city center is affected by processes identified through the model of gentrification, a phenomenon that does not occur in the same manner everywhere. Facing with a strong decline in population and with the impoverishment of the traditional manufacturing base, the structure of the center of Naples is actually a complex mosaic of degradation and restoration, in which they follow one another, almost street by street, settlements of middle class (which is changing in its composition), popular areas growing marginalization and small islands of gentrification. The lower class characterization of many parts of the city center resists, together with the settlement of immigrants, while are rapidly changing the functions of the CBD in relation to the expanding of the metropolitan area.The change takes place in the context of a very fragmented political geography of the city – that makes the governance more difficult - and in a coexistence of opposing tendencies, sometimes identified as cases of gentrification, but also at the opposite of de-gentrification.