Can we construct the category of spectra (or maybe just its homotopy category) from the category of pointed topological spaces
using some kind of localization combined with other categorical constructions?


[The first part of the original question was wrong for a trivial reason pointed out by Reid Barton.]



Spectra and localizations of the category of topological spaces
[Removed a paragraph relating to an earlier version of the question]


You can construct Spectra categorically by adjoining an inverse to the endofunctor Σ of Top as a presentable (∞,1)-category. Inverting an endofunctor is a very different operation than inverting maps! It's like the difference between forming ℤ[1/p] and ℤ/(p).


Here is one way to verify the claim. To invert the endomorphism Σ of Top we should form the colimit, in the (∞,1)-category Pres of presentable categories and colimit-preserving functors, of the sequence Top → Top → ... where all the functors in the diagram are Σ. A basic fact about Pres is that we can compute such a colimit by forming the diagram (on the opposite index category) formed by the right adjoints of these functors, and taking its *limit* as a diagram of underlying (∞,1)-categories [HTT 5.5.3.18]. The functors in the limit cone will have left adjoints which are the functors to the colimit in Pres. In our case we obtain the sequence Top ← Top ← ... where the functors are Ω, and the limit of this sequence is precisely the classical definition of (Ω-)spectrum: a sequence of spaces Xn with equivalences Xn → ΩXn+1.


