Five-Star Homes: Hotel Imaginaries and Class Distinction in Australia’s Elite Vertical Urbanism

Abstract

This article brings together a critical analysis of contemporary vertical urbanism with literature on class processes and sociocultural geographies of home. It examines how hotel imaginaries in high-rise real estate work to reshape and reinforce class distinction and discusses the implications for home and belonging in the city. The argument is developed through an analysis of two recently built apartment developments in Australia, with particular attention to developers’ and residents’ narratives. Vertical urbanization stands in contrast to Australia’s predominantly low-density metropolitan regions, at odds with the “Great Australian Dream” of a suburban stand-alone house. Hotel-inspired features, spaces, discourses, and practices enable middle-class apartment residents to forego an entrenched sense of what home and belonging in the city mean while reaffirming residents’ social distinction aspirations and developers’ financialization strategies. Within this context, developers, architects, and residents take inspiration from hotels to normalize apartment living, tapping into residents’ self-identification as well-traveled, cosmopolitan citizens. We show that the set of relations and encounters arising from the blurring of hotels and homes destabilizes tenure categories and redraws classed boundaries around narratives of transience, estrangement, and placelessness. We conclude by discussing the role of hotel imaginaries in the exacerbation of sociospatial divisions and urban inequalities.