Minimum City? The Deeper Impacts of the ‘Super-Rich’ on Urban Life

Welcome to ‘Pikettyville’? Mapping London’s alpha territories

“…Finally, SeMo also has a strong preference for KT but also for the SW and a smaller presence in W. [7] - Table 2 About HereMoving to an even more detailed level of analysis -that of postcode districts -we can examine the numbers and concentrations of our most wealthy and most London-centric AT type, the GPBs; the territories in which they leave their residential mark are surely at the very heart of 'Pikettyville' -a city characterized by large numbers of new zones for those benefitting from global 'patrimonial capitalism'. To talk of 'Pikettyville' is then to conjure up an image of an urban system that has become hardwired to adopting, channeling and inviting excesses of social and economic capital in search of a space in which the rich not only find safe haven but are also privileged by the kind of property and income tax regimes and wider economic climate that allows them to thrive on their capital investments, while the wider city experiences some of the most challenging economic conditions since the early twentieth century (Atkinson et al, 2016b). Table 3 shows the postcode districts in central London where the greatest numbers of the GPBs can be found.…”

Elite Formation, Power and Space in Contemporary London

“…The kind of city that emerges under these conditions is, as we have argued elsewhere (Atkinson et al, 2016), a kind of 'minimum city' in which the bargain struck with private wealth has allowed private capital to become the pre-eminent organizing principle of urban life while lowincome and middle-class households find themselves unsupported or dislocated. The loss of public housing, demolition of housing estates, subsidy arrangements for 'affordable' housing to high income earners and welfare retrenchment are characteristic not only of an emergency austerity mode following the financial crash, but a deeper response by the political elite to maintain the needs of the rich -chaperoning the wealthy in order to insure the wider city against losses or leaks by capital and wealthy groups to other cities globally vying for their attention.…”

“…In this context we can see how city success, so often judged by measures of GDP and economic growth, fails to capture the grounded reality and fails to satisfy much human need in urban centres (Atkinson et al, 2016;Engelen et al, 2014). Layered onto this sense of social disconnection and invisibility run the machinations of a political sorting machine that gives rising emphasis to the privileging of wealth and its legitimation while paring back the resources allocated to the least well-off, especially through the capping of public housing subsidies and state benefits (Atkinson et al, 2016;Dorling, 2014;O'Hara, 2014). The idea that city 'success' can be measured in terms of equal access to essential resources has withered as a guiding ideal within political life.…”

Necrotecture: Lifeless Dwellings and London's Super‐Rich

“…This has generated intense social anger and resentment in light of prevailing welfare austerity measures, poor track record on house building, attacks on public housing and what many see as nothing less than a war on the urban poor (Watt, ). Analysis of London's dramatically evolving skylines shows that this is largely an exclusive landscape, off limits to those distressed and upended by the property market across the city (Atkinson et al ., ). It is also, as we shall see, one implicated in illicit flows of laundered money (Platt, ), poor planning decisions and largely absent owners who do little for the city's wider economy (Fernandez et al ., ).…”

“…Rounds of purchasing by cash‐rich buyers attracted to a city that continues to court capital and the wealthy (Atkinson et al ., ) have been evident for some years. Despite emerging signs of declining prices at the apex of the super‐prime property market, this has done little to staunch continuing flows of international investment capital and those ranks of the super‐rich already in the city (Atkinson et al ., ). The city hosts the highest numbers of super‐rich individuals per capita of any city globally—around 3,100 ultra‐high net worth individuals (UHNWIs, those with assets, not including property, of £20 million/US $30 million or more) and a further 6,100 UHNWIs with second homes in the city (Wealth‐X, ), while the 2018 Sunday Times rich list suggests the presence of 92 billionaires in the city.…”