Sports fandoms can form a key site of identity formation, particularly as they gather and merge numerous threads of identity, including gender, socio-economic status, and civic affiliation. The connections formed between members of the fandom, the fandom and the team, and the fandom and the place in which it is grounded can be a strong force for social cohesion. This cohesion becomes particularly relevant during times of crisis, when some turn to sports as a unifier. However, these relationships can also be fraught with tensions, within the group and without. Forces such as nostalgia and the ‘othering’ of those outside the group become import methods in creating and sustaining these Andersonian “imaginary communities” of fans, mitigating difference. In examining this process of identity creation, two cities were chosen for their intense team attachments: Pittsburgh and Baltimore. Qualitative analysis of discourses surrounding the teams in these cities reveals the complex ways in which nostalgic fantasies about the team and its relationship to the city are created and maintained, hierarchies of space and time are formed, and the identity of the community is shaped by its relationship to team and city. Analysis of the sporting landscape, created through a complex network of material culture, media, and the repetition of certain fantasy themes, reveals how geography is complexly implicated in the production of sporting fandom. / text

L’obiettivo della tesi è stato quello di analizzare il fenomeno del cosiddetto Fuorisalone attraverso un duplice sguardo disciplinare: da una parte quello del mobilities paradigm (Sheller-Urry, 2006), dall’altra attraverso la prospettiva della produzione sociale dello spazio di Lefebvre (1974) e sue recenti applicazioni nell’ambito della media geography (Jansson, 2007) e degli eventi urbani (Lehtovouri, 2010). 
Nella prima parte viene proposta una ricostruzione della storia sociale dell’evento: vengono individuati i soggetti centrali alla sua nascita, le dinamiche di interdipendenza tra di essi e le forme del loro radicamento nel contesto territoriale e socio-culturale della città di Milano e della sua cultura del progetto.
La seconda parte offre invece una prospettiva sincronica: da una parte l’analisi della produzione degli spazi sociali del design, ed in particolare dei singoli design district, che durante questo evento arrivano a qualificare lo spazio urbano come “eterotopia diffusa” (Foucault, 1967). Dall’altra parte l’analisi delle sue forme di consumo, presentando i risultati di un'indagine sul campo condotta attraverso la triangolazione di diversi metodi di carattere etnografico in tre design district durante le edizioni 2011 e 2012. Attraverso l'indagine delle pratiche mediate e di mobilità, delle percezioni ed esperienze da parte dei suoi visitatori, il lavoro ha permesso di leggere la specificità di questo evento nella circolarità tra le dimensioni produttive e le forme di consumo mobile e mediato dello spazio urbano. / The aim of the thesis has been to analyze the so-called phenomenon of Fuorisalone through a double disciplinary perspective: on the one hand that of the mobilities paradigm (Sheller-Urry, 2006), on the other hand through the Lefebvrean perspective on the production of social space (1974) and its most recent applications in the field of media geography (Jansson, 2007) and urban events (Lehtovouri, 2010). The first part is dedicated to the reconstruction of the social history of this event by identifying the pivotal subjects for its birth, the dynamics of interdependency between them and the forms of their rootedness in the territorial and socio-cultural context of the city of Milan and its design culture. The second part adopts a synchronous perspective: on the one hand the analysis of the production of the social spaces of design, with particular attention to the single design districts involved, that during this event characterize the urban space as a “diffused heterotopia” (Foucault, 1967). On the other hand on the consumption forms of this event, by presenting the results of the field work conducted in three design districts during the 2011 and 2012 editions. Through the triangulation of different ethnographical methods, the research has focused on the mobility and mediated practices, on the perceptions and experiences of visitors, reading the specificity of this event through the circularity between the productive dimensions and its mobile and mediated forms of consumption.