This chapter focuses on the dynamic aspects of the interaction between towns and consumption. For the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in fact, most of the historical work linking towns and consumption focuses on developments in urban retailing rather than directly on the changing attitudes and expectations of the consumers themselves. An understanding of the social history of consumption needs to be based on the manufacturing and marketing of products as well as their direct delivery to consumers. The rise of consumerism as a mass phenomenon, entailing the spread of a general capacity and desire to choose between and enjoy an array of nonessential goods and services. Urban consumption began with the manufacture of goods. This was increasingly an urban activity, as industry continued the move from the countryside. Towns, and especially cities, thus became theatres of conspicuous consumption and display in a public setting open to the gaze of all.