LUXURY PLACE-MAKING in the CITY

Book Review

LUXURY PLACE-MAKING in the CITY Riley Kucheran

Making Prestigious Places: How Luxury Influences the Transformation of Cities, edited by Mario Paris, New York: Routledge, 2017, 192 pages, $125.50 (hardcover), ISBN 978-1138232525

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

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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 response that privileges the coproduction of urban services to transform luxury development into meaningful city building. Francesca Guerisoli’s chapter details the shift in museums from educational institutions to attractions in their own right and how they now act as catalysts for urban redevelopment and newly imagined prestige, elucidated with the Guggenheim Bilbao and the many private luxury-branded museums. Alain Bourdin takes a sociological approach to the connection between metropolis and luxury, a well-established relationship in many European cities, and here the book zooms out to regional and global scales to discuss the internationalization of luxury place-making. Finally, Paris concludes the


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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

CULTURAL POLITICS

LUXURY PL ACE-M A K ING in the CIT Y

R iley Kucheran

One of the greatest benefits of luxury is its potential for more social forms of production and ethical treatment of the environment, so an additional chapter on the intersections of sustainability, luxury, and urban planning would have been welcomed, as would a more clear discussion of methodologies common among contributors so that scholars and urban planners wishing to pursue these issues might have a better understanding of where to start. If meant to stimulate dialogue between urban and luxury scholars, this collection is successful. It identifies future avenues of research and does the historical and theoretical groundwork needed for scholars to critically engage with luxury in the city. Making Prestigious Places makes a strong case for considering the impact of luxury on cities more seriously and is a convenient entry into the combined fields of urban planning and critical luxury studies.

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collection himself with a chapter that calls for government responses to luxury-driven transformation to ensure that luxury spaces are shared spaces. The challenge is to extract financial and territorial value from luxury development proposals, which Paris poses to public actors and urban planners. By beginning with the “reality” that the practices and preferences of very rich global elites drive change in cities with real estate, urban design, and planning, the collection moves forward its goal of problematizing the generalization that luxury production and consumption always adversely affects cities. However, this also moves the discussion further away from the critical social justice issues identified at the outset. Gentrification’s displacement is unfortunate but for the greater good, and the lived experiences of those marginalized by urban luxury transformations are glossed over. These issues are likely important for the contributors, and a common sense of responsibility threads the chapters together, but this collection only calls attention to gaps in the field.

Riley Kucheran is an Ojibway PhD student studying Indigenous luxury fashion at Ryerson and York Universities in Toronto. His research project “Fashioning Reconciliation” builds connectively in the Indigenous design community and facilitates Traditional Knowledge transmission.
