The Luxury City: Where Wealth Glitters and Sidewalks Crumble

 The Luxury City: Where Wealth Glitters and Sidewalks Crumble

In many American cities, the tension is visible at street level. A brand-new luxury condo gleams beside a broken sidewalk. An upscale organic grocer sits across from a shuttered library. A Tesla glides through a pothole the city hasn't filled in five years. This isn’t a planning error. It’s an economic pattern.

In 1958, economist John Kenneth Galbraith named this dynamic with surgical precision: private affluence, public squalor.

"The sense of urgency in spending for defense, or in the private purchase of automobiles or household appliances, is not matched in the provision of urban schools, parks, or police protection." — Galbraith, The Affluent Society

Galbraith observed that as societies grow richer, their spending increasingly favors personal luxury over shared well-being. Governments become reluctant to fund public services, while individuals are trained to measure success by personal consumption.

Nowhere is this clearer than in urban geography.

Mapping Inequality Into the Landscape

Cities today wear their contradictions openly. High-end apartment buildings rise next to neglected infrastructure. Private gyms flourish while public recreation centers close. Public transit systems age into dysfunction while rideshare apps surge.

This is not just aesthetic imbalance—it's a spatial expression of structural priorities. When investment flows toward private real estate, branded retail, and boutique experiences, it flows away from housing for the poor, walkable neighborhoods, and basic maintenance.

The result is what Galbraith predicted: a geography of glittering isolation next to functional decay.

"There is no sense in our affluent society of public well-being comparable to that of private well-being." — Galbraith

From the Parking Lot to the School Roof

You can feel the gap in everyday experiences. The mall has free Wi-Fi, pristine bathrooms, and mood lighting. The public school across town has leaking ceilings and outdated textbooks. We’re not just failing to fund the commons—we’re becoming numb to its erosion.

Much of this is driven by what Galbraith called the blunting of civic imagination: if you live in a well-off ZIP code, you don't ride the bus, send your kids to public school, or go to the library. So when those systems collapse, you don't notice. Or worse—you call them obsolete.

"One of the greatest pieces of economic fiction is the notion that markets are inherently moral." — Galbraith

Seeing With Geographic Clarity

Geographers and students alike must learn to read cities not just in terms of land use, but in terms of investment and abandonment. Whose space is made clean, beautiful, walkable? Whose is cracked, fenced off, under-policed or over-policed?

Urban inequality is not invisible. It’s mapped into pavement, lighting, air quality, sidewalk width, and bus routes.

Galbraith’s work helps frame this not as a failure of capitalism, but as its logical outcome when private gain is prioritized over collective care.

What Can Be Done?

We can design differently. Invest publicly. Restore dignity to the systems we all share. But first we have to name what we’re seeing.

"Public services must be so good that only the rich will be able to afford something better." — Galbraith

A luxury city is not just one that sparkles. It's one where the shine is shared.

Comments

  1. David Tyler Rand-McKayJune 25, 2025 at 7:06 PM

    minute version: Why is it that the luxury condo has glowing lights and fresh pavement, but the public school across the street has a leaking roof?

    In 1958, economist John Kenneth Galbraith warned us this would happen. He called it private affluence, public squalor.

    “There is no sense in our affluent society of public well-being comparable to that of private well-being.”

    In plain terms: the richer a society gets, the more it invests in individual comfort and the more it ignores shared systems like transit, schools, or parks.

    You can see it everywhere — Uber works, the buses don’t. The mall has mood lighting, the sidewalk is cracked.

    This isn’t just inequality — it’s geography.

    The city becomes a map of what we care about: glitter for the few, decay for the rest.

    And until we name it, we can’t fix it.

    ReplyDelete

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