ABSTRACT
Real-estate and finance capital continue their actions in the U.S. city, and with a vengeance. A stepped-up kind of elite privileging—land and blocks dramatically transformed into globally declarative, affluent play spaces—now marks many major American cities (Wyly et al. 2009). This restructuring, an affluent takeover of the urban currently moves far beyond downtown cores. In the neoliberal era, redevelopment governances (alliances of local government, prominent developers, realtors, city growth organizations) invoke a fervent rhetoric (the need for their cities to compete for resources in supposedly new global times) that elaborately rationalizes the drive to “upscale” and really expand elite patterns of consumption. In the process, condominiums and second homes supplant apartments, stores, and houses, with upper-income aesthetics, sensibilities, and recreational whims extended to new terrains. Well-coordinated landscapes of pleasure and affluent residency are cultivated, producing Gordon MacLeod's (2002) “cathedrals of consumption.” To Fran Tonkiss (2005), elite privileging in current times takes many forms, but this one is particularly overt and visible.
