Life in an Alpha Territory: Discontinuity and conflict in an elite London ‘village’

Abstract

This paper forms part of a larger study of the social implications of London becoming the location of choice for the global 'super-rich'. The study examines how members of new wealth elites organise their day-to-day activities and the impact their growing numbers have on the prestigious neighbourhoods from which they are displacing pre-existing elites, and the disruptive effect they have on previously taken-for-granted mores, networks and places of association. The aim of the paper is to situate this wider study within a geographic and historical context by framing it within the arguments of Piketty, namely that increased levels of inequality since 1980 are best understood not as a secular trend but as signifying a return to the pre-existing conditions that characterised western society prior to 1914. To analyse the evolution of -what geodemographers have termed -the Alpha Territory in London over a period of 500 years the paper takes Highgate Village as a case study area, identities the manner in which the Village's varied housing stock appeals to different manifestations of this Alpha Territory and uses three recent planning disputes to bring to the surface otherwise hidden conflicts between the interests of global capital and the defenders of more traditional elite values. Returning to the issues raised by Piketty the paper concludes with an analysis of social change through the use of archive material which enables the lifestyles of those who currently occupy Highgate's most prestigious properties to be compared with those who occupied them a hundred years ago.

The globalisation of real estate: the politics and practice of foreign real estate investment

“…These groups have very different socio-spatial experiences in the city, they will interact with local infrastructure in different ways (if at all), and will, thus, impact and engage with the city in different ways (see also : Forrest, Koh, & Wissink, in press-b). In London, for example, neighbourhoods with high concentrations of HNWI and UHNWI investors may appear to be (or may be) devoid of people, and local businesses can become unviable in these neighbourhoods (Webber & Burrows, 2016), to say nothing about the broader questions relating to neighbourhood life.…”

“…Many HNWI, UHNWI and UUHNWI go to great lengths to protect their privacy and to isolate themselves from public scrutiny. Recent studies have shown that gaining access to the economic, social and political spaces of the HNWI, UHNWI and UUHNWI can be a difficult task, with each group presenting different challenges (see the following authors for methodologies suited to HNWI, UHNWI and UUHNWI studies: Atkinson, 2016Atkinson, , p. 1309Harrington, 2016, p. 22;Webber & Burrows, 2016).…”

“…The motivations of the NMC from Asia to invest in countries like Canada and Australia are being shaped by a suite of intergenerational migration and education plans that involve the whole family (Robertson, 2013;Robertson & Ho, 2016;Robertson & Rogers, in press). These could prove to be very different to the actions of UHNWI and UUHNWI investors (Harrington, 2016;Knowles, 2016;Webber & Burrows, 2016), and ultimately, they may require different regulatory responses.…”

“…Indeed, the analysis of the globalisation of real estate is replete with fabulous spatial metaphors and conceptual tools that are place-specific, such as the alpha territories of the super-rich in London (Atkinson, 2016;Webber & Burrows, 2016), the safety deposit box metaphor in New York (Fernandez et al, in press), the tycoon city metaphor in Hong Kong (Wissink, Koh, & Forrest, in press) or the globally focused real estate/financial complex (see work by Manuel Aalbers et al). Looking across the articles in this special issue reminds us that it is a mistake to assume that foreign investment in Sydney or Hong Kong might manifest along similar cultural, social, material and political lines as foreign investment in London or Seoul.…”

Elite Formation, Power and Space in Contemporary London

“…A particular feature of contemporary wealth formations is their almost free-floating position above the wider social mass and physical fabric of the city (Graham, 2016) and which has displaced the codes and, in some cases, physical position of a more patrician, aristocratic and monied elite which offered a more reciprocal, engaged and connected form of patronage (Webber and Burrows, 2016). The kind of business elite exit from civic life identified by Lasch (1995) began to mark a new kind of relationship between an increasingly wealthy fraction of a nouveau riche class who had been fattened under neoliberalism and the accrual of gigantic rewards for work in finance, banking, insurance and real estate.…”