Elite Neighbourhoods at the Second Gilded Age
World War I brought an abrupt end to what was known as the âGilded Ageâ, a term coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner as the title of their 1873 book. Twain and Warnerâs novel depicted the prosperityâbut also the greed and speculationâthat drove extreme inequality in the late nineteenth century in the United States. There was more wealth than ever before, and yet, it was concentrated in fewer hands than ever. Similar trends of polarisation were evident in other developed countries (Piketty 2014).
The first gilded age collapsed with World War I. The destruction and cost of the war saw the wealth gap radically diminish from its historical high to new historical lows. And yet, throughout the twentieth century, wealth inequalities in developed countries rebounded steadily, slowed down only temporarily by World War II and the rise of Keynesian economics mid-century. By the start of the twenty-first century, the wealth gap has almost fully bounced back to the record highs of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Piketty 2014, p. 122). Riding the waves of globalisation, a technological revolution, cultural change, and neoliberalism (Irvin 2013; Freeland 2013), the wealth of the wealthiest 1% of global citizensâand primarily the top 0.01%âhas skyrocketed, leaving the rest of the world far behind (Piketty 2014; Credit Suisse 2016). A second gilded age has begun.
Globally, in 2017, the wealthiest 1% owned 50.1% of all household wealth, up from 45.5% in 2000. The wealthiest 1% own approximately 25% of wealth in Europe, and approximately 35% in the United States. Yet, even âthe 1%â is a crude category, masking the fact that much of its wealth is concentrated in the hands of an even smaller category of people, the so-called super-rich. Since 2000, the number of millionaires globally has nearly doubled, increasing by 170%. The number of individuals with a net worth of US$50 million rose five-fold, âmaking them by far the fastest-growing group of wealth holdersâ (Credit Suisse 2016, p. 18). Just eight of these billionaires own as much wealth as the 3.6 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity (Oxfam 2018).
Australiaâs self-proclaimed ethos of egalitarianism is captured in the popular slogan of âfair goâ and the title of its national hymn âAdvance Australia Fairâ. Yet, this ethos is contrasted by the actual levels of wealth inequality evident in Australiaâover half the national household wealth is owned by the wealthiest 10% of Australians, with the wealthiest 1% owning between 15% and 23% (Sheil and Stilwell 2016; Oxfam 2018).
Such studies of national and global trends in wealth inequality (Piketty 2014; Credit Suisse 2016) offer compelling statistics as evidence of the second gilded age. But how does such extreme and rapidly rising concentration of wealth manifest in the everyday realities of an increasingly urbanised world? And, in what ways are the privileges of elites supported by the structures, dynamics, and everyday lives of the cities and neighbourhoods in which they reside?
Exploring similar questions, Davis and Monkâs (2011) edited collection Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism vividly portrays the landscapes of a contemporary âsavage, fanatical capitalismâ, and the extreme inequality it produces. Evil Paradises highlights the extreme spatial segregation and fortification of wealth in man-made utopias across the globe: an amusement park in the Egyptian desert; a private natural reserve in the United States; faux-Californian suburbs in Iran and Hong Kong; the fantasy-like megaprojects of Dubai; and even the luxury securitised neighbourhoods accommodating both foreigners and the local elites in Kabul. From city-sized supermalls, through to artificial island suburbs, these âalternative universesâ of the super-rich embody their desire for âinfinite consumption, total social exclusion and physical security, and architectural monumentality â that are clearly incompatible with the ecological and moral survival of humanityâ (Davis and Monk 2011, p. xv).
In this book, I take Davis and Monkâs (2011) line of argument a step further. More than just sites for the wasteful spending of capital, drawing on Bourdieu (1986), I demonstrate how elitesâ paradises serve as sites for accumulation of capital, and as such are instrumental to elitesâ domination of the second gilded age. The premise of such a perspective is the two-way relationship between the polarisation evident at the scale of the cityâgrowing segregation and inequalities between rich and poor neighbourhoods (Pawson and Herath 2015; Randolph and Tice 2017)âand the polarisation that is evident in measures of global and national distribution of wealth (Piketty 2014; Credit Suisse 2016; ABS 2016). The growing gap between neighbourhoods is not only a symptom of the global polarisation problem, but integral to it. As such, the urban neighbourhood is also potentially an important site for intervention to address growing inequalities.
The book examines these questions through a study of three of Australiaâs most affluent suburbs: Toorak in Melbourne, Mosman in Sydney, and Cottesloe in Perth. The terms âneighbourhoodâ and âsuburbâ are used interchangeably in Australia and, as such, the term âsuburbâ, as I use it throughout this book, does not necessarily indicate low-density urban form or distance from the city centre as it does in other cultures.
As urban neighbourhoods, Toorak, Mosman, and Cottesloe, while certainly glamorous, are not as fanciful as some of the âevil paradisesâ depicted in Davis and Monkâs collection. Furthermore, these suburbsâ perceived vulnerability to the savages of metropolitan growthâespecially thoroughfare traffic and residential densificationâappears contradictory to the narrative of an all-powerful elite on the rise. Yet, these three suburbs are important as sites in which Australian and other elites build their power and capital in its three guises: economic, social, and cultural (Bourdieu 1986). Understanding this complex, at times contradictory, story of glamour and angst in Australiaâs elite neighbourhoods is key to understanding social class relations in the cities of the second gilded age.
My intention in this book is not to offer a comprehensive account of the histories of the three suburbs, which have been documented by others (Souter 1993; Marchant James 2007; Foster 1999). Nor is the book particularly concerned with statistical measurement of the socioeconomic profil...