The utilization of consumer goods and services for the satisfaction of the present needs of individuals, organizations, and governments. Paolucci (2001) Antipode 33, 4 illustrates the way that the contemporary city is ‘a concrete manifestation of the centrality of consumption’. Jackson (2004) TIBG 29, 2 examines the way that producers have ‘customized’ their products for different markets, and demonstrates the resilience of local consumption cultures in the face of globalization. ‘Alternative’ consumption is a practice in the North that is underpinned by concern about social injustice and unfair labour practices in the South, and the practices adopted as part of a ‘radical’ lifestyle (Bryant and Goodman (2001) TIBG 29, 3). Barnett et al. (2005) Antipode 3 see ethical consumption as a significant moment in consumer activism; ‘one in which large numbers of people are explicitly mobilised in support of various political causes through a shared identity as consumers, but where the spatiality of this mobilisation exceeds the scale of the nation-state’. Spaces of consumption are purpose-built spaces, characterized by the provision of consumption-related services, visual consumption, and cultural products. They are ‘the physical manifestation of consumerism as a way of life…play[ing] a key role in the re-invention of the post-industrial city’ (S. Miles 2010).