Abstract
This chapter introduces the key political and theoretical debates with which this book engages. Global wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of elites, leading some to declare the emergence of a ‘second gilded age’. In urban studies, new questions are being asked about how the structures, dynamics, and everyday lives of cities and neighbourhoods contribute to such extreme inequality. In this chapter, I introduce the question of whether and how elite neighbourhoods might be conceived as sites where elites accumulate not only economic wealth, but also their powerful social and cultural capitals. Drawing on the literatures of social stratification and spatial justice, I present some of the key theoretical concepts that guide my analysis in the rest of the book. Finally, in this chapter, I also briefly introduce some relevant background information about Toorak, Mosman, and Cottesloe, and describe the methods used in my study of these three Australian suburbs.
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Wiesel, I. (2019). Polarisation. In: Power, Glamour and Angst. The Contemporary City. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1367-7_1
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