This work aims at exploring the unprecedented role played by new patterns and practices of consumption not only within economic systems, but also within the processes of production and reproduction of contemporary city through a case study, El Raval neighbourhood in Barcelona. Inserted in the theoretical frame of retail geography, methodologically the research is based on a qualitative approach which implies the semantic differential to analyse each shop of the selected urban area, apart from the photographic observation of the main commercial streets in different times and days. 

Keywords: new consumption patterns, (re)production of urban space, Barcelona.