Luxury Place-Making in the City

The basic premise of Making Prestigious Places—that the pursuit of luxury transforms our cities—is timely given recent revisions to "creative city" literature forwarded by Richard Florida. The urban renaissance of recent decades is in crisis: gentrification fueled by a creative class of professionals also increased inequality and segregation, and luxury is partially responsible. Change might begin with new galleries and artisanal cafés, but expensive restaurants and upscale services soon follow, which then attract the usual set of global luxury retailers and high-end real estate developments. None of this is new, but thinking about urban planning through "luxury-driven transformations" with both critical and technical expertise is the nuanced approach of collection editor Mario Paris, an architect, PhD, and contract professor in urban planning at Politecnico di Milano, along with contributor Li Fang, an architect–urban planner and researcher who specializes in luxury.

Their argument is that urban planners have ignored luxury because of its negative associations and perverse effects, but the power of prestige can be harnessed to enhance quality of life in cities. This sentiment is shared by authors in a new edited collection that puts academic researchers and urban planning practitioners in dialogue about the impacts of globalized luxury markets on cities. Part of the Routledge Research in Planning and Urban Design series of multidisciplinary approaches to particular cities or urban issues, Making Prestigious Places assembles case studies from Europe, North and South America, Asia, and the Middle East that demonstrate the globalized nature of luxury-driven urban transformation while advancing the conversation beyond its homogenizing effects. Contributors have backgrounds in architecture, art history, cultural studies, urban planning, and sociology, though many either hail from Italy or have focused their studies on Milan.

Part 1 ("Concepts") introduces conceptual frameworks for luxury and the actors who participate in the development of "prestigious places": urban planners who mediate between public institutions and private stakeholders, luxury fashion brands, financial groups, and real estate investors. Part 2 ("Reflections") interacts with these ideas in more specific operational contexts, such as the genesis of certain "luxury districts" and renewal of historic city centers. Due to its personal and contextual character, luxury eludes definition, and it is not captured in any one chapter, but some strong working definitions are established. Readers unfamiliar with the rich philosophical, historical, and theoretical depth to luxury will benefit from John Armitage and Joanne Roberts' chapter, which summarizes the genealogy of luxury and current usage of the term before discussing luxury sites in urban places.

A preface by Patsy Healey, author of Making Better Places (2010), immediately situates the concern that luxury deepens social inequality, and she asks the tough questions. Must luxury be so destructive in displacing the less fortunate? Could the benefits of luxury be more widely shared? What can be done to steer luxury investment toward better public aims? Together these encapsulate the approach found in critical luxury studies, an emerging interdisciplinary field devoted to studying the multifarious impacts of luxury for more ethical aims. An introduction by Paris and Fang then discusses the intersections of luxury and urban studies over the last several decades: the centuries-old traditional relationship between luxury and the city, and how private developers and public institutions now collaborate on prestigious place-making. This concept is more fully explained later in Andrea Pavia's chapter on how shopping flaneurs refocus urban regeneration on walkability, openness to the environment, and community gathering—think sweeping public plazas and promenades like Rodeo Drive.

Other chapter highlights include Paola Pucci and Giulia Fini's distinction between two geographies of luxury transformation on micro-and macrolevels: small-scale conversion of existing (and often deindustrialized) urban structures, and construction of "exclusive enclaves" that disassociate themselves from the city entirely. Both reflect neoliberal strategies for urban regeneration with public-private partnerships that obfuscate publicness and segregate by socioeconomic status. The Via Montenapoleone and several gated residential areas of Milan are used as examples to advocate for a policy...