Luxury Development Research Articles

Muzeum Narodowe w Krakowie – Uniwersytetowi Jagiellońskiemu w 600. rocznicę założenia uczelni

On the occasion of the 660th foundation anniversary of the Academy of Krakow, which fell in 2023, the article takes a closer look at a theme that has not been explored in the academic literature, namely the contribution of the staff of Poland’s oldest national museum in Krakow to the celebrations marking the 600th anniversary of the academy in 1964 with an exhibition entitled Art in Krakow, 1350–1550. It was a monumental exhibition, which is worth recalling so as not to erase the traces of this initiative. The curator of the exhibition for the 600th foundation anniversary of the Jagiellonian University was Maria Kopff. In organising it, she worked with great dedication and devotion, and it was thanks to this exhibition that she gained great professional and moral authority in the museum community, and on many occasions her opinions influenced the most important museum issues in Poland. It was the exhibition that synchronised monuments of sacred art with monuments of a secular nature in a manner unprecedented in the Polish People’s Republic, all in an attempt to show the luxuriant development of Polish art from the 14th to the 16th century. Although the content of the exhibition was close to the so-called ‘historical policy’, exposing, among other things, the secular character of Cracovian art, it undoubtedly presented the enormous achievements of Polish national heritage.

Urbanization and Its Impact on Real Estate Development in Uganda

Urbanization in Uganda is driving significant transformations, impacting the dynamics of cities and the real estate sector. As rural populations migrate to urban centers like Kampala, Entebbe, and Mbarara for better opportunities, the resulting population growth pressures existing infrastructure and exacerbates housing shortages. This surge in demand for residential and commercial properties necessitates substantial investments and innovative approaches to expand and upgrade urban infrastructure. The housing market faces a stark contrast between luxury developments and underserved informal settlements, highlighting the need for affordable housing solutions and policies. Urbanization also offers opportunities for sustainable and smart city development, integrating green building practices, renewable energy, and advanced technologies to enhance urban resilience and efficiency. Government policies and urban planning initiatives are crucial in promoting sustainable growth, affordable housing, and robust infrastructure development. By addressing infrastructure needs, implementing innovative housing solutions, and adopting sustainable urban planning, Uganda can create vibrant, inclusive, and resilient cities for the future. Keywords: Urbanization, Real estate development, Infrastructure, Affordable housing, Sustainable cities.

‘I leave the everyday behind, everyday’: Sounds and spaces of the revanchist middle classes in Berlin’s Fünf Morgen Dahlem Urban village

Processes of gentrification and redevelopment have accelerated in Berlin in the decades following reunification, however the lens of research inquiry has most often been trained upon districts like Kreuzberg or Neukölln – areas synonymous with media portrayals of Berlin as a hedonistic, gritty, artistic location. These analyses rarely deal with how the regulation of sound features in Berlin’s reshaping via investment capital. This paper builds on previous research on housing developments and regeneration in Berlin, however it centres itself within the under-researched, affluent space of Dahlem in southwest Berlin. While this long affluent area does not necessarily undergo new-build gentrification, luxury developments like Fünf Morgen provoke sonic and spatial conflicts that highlight cleavages between different factions of the middle-classes. The paper shows how luxury housing projects come to shape the sonic and spatial atmospheres of cities via a micro-examination of sonic and spatial struggles around Fünf Morgen Dahlem Urban Village built almost 10 years ago. Through a discursive and ethnographic engagement with the everyday life of this site formerly occupied by the American Army Forces, the paper explores the urban atmospheres created by these projects after their instantiation. It evidences the neoliberal privatisation processes at work via sonic and spatial conflicts in already affluent city areas.

To what extent do developers capitalise on urban green assets?

Developers are interested in the fact that people are keen on living close to urban green spaces – and especially that they are willing to pay for it. This study aims to investigate to what extent developers capitalise on green space proximity, and to what extent they use green space proximity as a selling point in their marketing communications. We investigate developers’ activities around 107 public parks and green squares in Lodz, Poland, between 2011 and 2021. We focus specifically on how many new residential buildings were built within a 500-metre buffer around the parks, divided into an inner buffer (within 100 m) and an outer buffer (within 100–500 m). (Despite being farther, the outer buffer is still considered to be near the park.) Our results show that most new residential developments occurred around large and very large parks, parks characterised by the highest multifunctionality, and – most importantly – parks otherwise known to serve as amenities (positively influencing real estate prices). The most attractive parks tend to attract the most developments. Furthermore, the larger the park, the smaller the share of standard new developments. Additionally, we found that luxury developments were more likely to be advertised as benefiting from green space proximity, even if they were not located within the inner (100 m) buffer. We discuss these results in the context of external benefits reaped by developers as well as various cases of abuse or greenwashing claims in marketing new residential developments. We indicate how developers who build up informal green spaces (most new developments were sited on land that was previously not built up) reap external benefits provided by publicly maintained green spaces, and how this fits into the neoliberal urban green growth machine.

There Goes the Neighborhood by Jade Adia (review)

Reviewed by: There Goes the Neighborhood by Jade Adia Wesley Jacques Adia, Jade There Goes the Neighborhood. Disney/Hyperion, 2023 [432p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781368084321 $18.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781368084338 $10.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 7-12 Despite losing a friend to a stray bullet in their South LA neighborhood in fifth grade, best friends Rhea, Zeke, and Malachi love their community—it's their home, with everything that entails. Unfortunately, the area is changing, and a difficult lesson on gentrification poses a new threat to the group of Black and brown fifteen-year-olds as Zeke and his family are to be evicted from their apartment to make way for luxury developments and wealthy newcomers. Rhea is determined to prevent this, so she devises a plan equal part brilliant, cynical, and dangerous in [End Page 246] how well it takes off: start SOSI, a wholly not real but really impactful new gang. Apparently, a social media campaign, a strategic use of fireworks, some well-placed tags, and the help of some new friends—which Rhea is reluctant to accept—are all the group needs to scare investors off. When a white man is killed, however, the fake gang very quickly turns into a real problem, and the friends are pulled into murder mystery that reveals the ways corporate interests and racist policies have always been unseen stakeholders in gang violence. Rhea's believable narration captures her (justifiable) fury at the forces displacing her community, and it also reveals the tenderness that drives her to a misguided plan to protect her home at all costs. This is a smart and intimate reflection on community that impressively makes sure to give its fifteen-year-old characters awkward first kisses and meme-able senses of humor despite the palpably high stakes. Copyright © 2023 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

An Study of Portfolio Selection Based on Luxury Goods

Portfolio optimization is the process by which investors select various securities and other assets to form portfolios according to demand and then optimize those portfolios to achieve their investment objectives. Compared with other industries, the consumer industry is a typical non-cyclical industry, less affected by the fluctuations of the economic cycle and more stable. Because high-end consumer prices are less elastic to demand and industry barriers are high, their investment prospects are better, and growth rates are faster. This paper examines whether luxury goods stocks are worth investing in and screens for the best-performing stocks within their sectors. This paper uses stock selection methods: P/E, Payout, EPS, and Dividend Yield. Further, the findings from the four methods are combined to select the two best-performing stocks. This paper focuses on why luxury stocks are worth investing in and the most worthwhile stocks in recent years by analyzing the data, with the experimental data being daily data for seven years from 2016-2022, involving ten representative stocks in the luxury sector in OTCMT and NYSE. Finally, a comparison of the cumulative and annualized returns of each approach demonstrates the superiority of the portfolio selection model put out in this work. It is concluded that more affluent young consumers still drive luxury goods despite slowing global economic growth. The data presents KER and LVMUY as the two stocks with the best investment value. Combined with the great trend of luxury development in recent years, investors can make a choice for these two stocks.

The City and the City: Tent Camps and Luxury Development in the NoMA Business Improvement District (BID) in Washington, D.C.

The NoMA Business Improvement District (BID) is one of Washington DC's fastest developing areas and has one of the city's largest concentrations of unhoused tent camps, many of which are located in underpasses that provide bits of protection and privacy. These underpasses were created during DC's City Beautiful Movement and have been the site of neoliberal antihomeless strategies. In this paper I explore the production of space in the NoMA area and how property owners, business associations, and government actors sanitized public space for wealthy newcomers while excluding poor and unhoused residents.

Vertical Gentrification: A 3D Analysis of Luxury Housing Development in New York City

New York City has experienced a boom in elite “luxury” housing development. With large apartments and expansive amenity spaces, luxury buildings offer uncrowded living in an otherwise densely populated landscape. However, making space for these luxuries requires novel engineering, especially high-rise development. This article maps the expanding footprint of luxury real estate in three dimensions, analyzing 943 housing projects built between 2000 and 2020. It assesses how construction of taller buildings with larger footprints increased height and volume of the built environment, and how these landscape changes interact with social changes related to gentrification. On average, new build luxury development increased height by 6.8 stories and more than doubled building volumes. Building heights and volumes are also significantly larger than neighboring structures. The resulting intensification of land investment leads to new kinds of displacements, especially middle class displacement. Vertical development is closely associated with super-gentrification, the further intensification of gentrification processes in already gentrified or otherwise middle class neighborhoods.

World class from within: Aspiration, connection and brokering in the Colombo real estate market

This paper explores how the aspirational urban form of the ‘world-class city’ is produced from within the city itself. Rather than focusing on global competition between cities, the analysis considers how local actors in key industries discursively and materially produce the world-class city through their labor. The analytic of connection is introduced as central to understanding how world-class city-making projects are achieved. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Colombo’s high-end real estate sector, the article examines how a successful broker creates and manages connections across different scales and registers. It focuses on three key areas: (1) the rhetorical connections drawn between luxury real estate and national development; (2) the connections created between wealthy foreign clients and local property owners and (3) the work of connecting disparate narratives about supply and demand for luxury housing. I highlight that against the backdrop of considerable economic and political uncertainty, connections are valuable even if they do not result in immediate profit. Offering a glimpse into the world of white-collar professionals in the luxury real estate industry, this paper underscores that world-class city-making projects are embedded in local realities even as they reflect generalized patterns of urban development.

ATTEMPTED CIRCUMVENTION OF ADDO NATIONAL PARK’S EXPANSION – BLATANT MANIPULATION BY OFFICIALS OF THE LAND-REFORM (REDISTRIBUTION) PROGRAMME AND WANTON DISREGARD OF SOUTH AFRICAN NATIONAL PARKS’ CONTRACTUAL RIGHTS: SOUTH AFRICAN NATIONAL PARKS V ADDO AFRIQ

The focus of the Provision of Land and Assistance Act 126 of 1993 is on land reform. It aims to ensure the beneficial use, development and improvement of land as referred to in the Act, contribute to bring about poverty alleviation, promote economic growth, and empower historically disadvantaged persons. However, this Act has recently been manipulated in order to develop a luxury tourist facility. In South African National Parks v Addo Afrique Estate (Pty) Ltd (1201/2010) [2011] ZAECGHC 40, the Eastern Cape High Court had to decide on the applicability of the Act on a luxury tourist development, as well as on the requirements for an interim interdict and the rights acquired through a right of pre-emption.

Luxury housing and gentrification in New York City, 2010-2019

ABSTRACT In recent years, New York City has experienced a boom in high end “luxury” construction. This paper maps the spatial expansion of the luxury housing market, using a GIS analysis of over 50,000 high-end real estate sales. It analyzes how the building boom contributed to super-gentrification, the further upgrading of already gentrified neighborhoods. The luxury housing market grew 102% during the 2010s, following two spatial patterns: an intensification of luxury development in already-affluent neighborhoods (especially on the west side of Manhattan) and an expansion into more recently gentrified neighborhoods (especially in northern and central Brooklyn). The luxury market is concentrated in areas that have 81% higher incomes and 31% more white residents that the rest of the city, though new luxury construction occurred in areas with a more diverse racial and class mix. While luxury development has expanded into marginally less-elite neighborhoods, it typically occurs in already gentrified places.

Nature-based solutions in hiding: goslings and greening in the still-industrial city

Nature-based solutions (NBS) include a wide range of ecosystem restoration and green infrastructure projects that are meant to also create economic and social benefits. In practice, NBS are increasingly tied to an outward-looking, post-industrial urban growth agenda. This focus ignores interventions which are less visible, smaller scale, and serve a working-class population in still-industrial areas of the city. In this short piece, we consider various small-scale interventions undertaken by the Newtown Creek Alliance to accomplish demonstrable environmental improvements along the heavily polluted industrial waterway of Newtown Creek in New York City. Though largely invisible within the larger conversation on NBS and urban development, these interventions have the potential for substantive environmental improvement that benefits existing long-term residents and users rather than being a tool to attract new residents and luxury development. We offer this example as an attempt to diversify the “best practice” case studies that will inform future NBS growth.

The luxury of doing nothing: inferring luxury from idleness display in travel setting

ABSTRACT Extant studies on luxury have focused on exploring motivations and service attributes behind the consumption of luxury travel brands. However, the underlying psychological mechanism of how customers develop a luxury perception of hospitality and tourism brands has received scant attention. By identifying scarcity of time as a significant factor behind luxury perception development, the current study argues that observers are more likely to perceive travel experiences as luxurious when they observe idleness rather than busyness. This perception is mediated by high social status inference on the part of the current user.

Sustainable development frictions: lifestyle migration on the coast of Jalisco, Mexico

AbstractThe concept of sustainability is materialized differently in luxury ecotourism development and in locally-directed community development initiatives. I examine the diverse environmental ideologies at play in these two distinct incarnations of "sustainable development" on the southern Jalisco, Mexico coast; first, in La Manzanilla, a community inhabited by a proportionately large population of leisure consumption-driven lifestyle migrants, then to the north, in elite ecotourism enclaves and a community displaced by a wealthy developer. I suggest these divergent development incarnations may be understood by expanding the concept of lifestyle migration to include a broader range of enactments of home, from different class perspectives. Global environmental ideologies and lifestyle migrant capital play a fundamental but not the only role in local sustainable development. I suggest global influences and local initiatives are creating a productive friction, reassembling global environmental knowledge and tourism imaginaries to suit local agendas. While there is no consensus on what sustainable development should look like in La Manzanilla, the intersection of initiatives is producing locally-directed development that contrasts with the erasure of local agendas happening in elite costal developments nearby.Keywords: sustainable development, friction, environmental ideology, tourism, lifestyle migration

The Polish Community of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Then and Now: A View from the Street

Abstract This article examines the changes that have occurred in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, throughout the years. Greenpoint became home to many Polish immigrants who sought economic opportunities in the U.S. and who wanted to escape from Soviet-era political unrest. Greenpoint became known as “Little Warsaw.” With economic restructuring in the U.S. and globalization, Greenpoint was affected. Factories and industrial work employing the Polish and working-class community was replaced by a service economy. The latest trend is gentrification and large scale, luxury development. The Polish community, to a large extent, has been priced-out. Polish retail, entertainment venues, and event spaces have also diminished because of dramatic commercial rent increases and shrinking population. The Polish community is found re-establishing itself in more affordable neighborhoods of New York City.

Residents’ perception of the influence of luxury chain hotels on ethnic tourism communities

ABSTRACTDespite considerable discussion on how resident perceptions impact on current tourism development, there is little evidence that this discussion has any impact on the factors that contribute to tourism’s presence. This paper reports on action research which was aimed at identifying what impacts host residents do perceive regarding luxury hotel development in ethnic destinations in China, and how they comment on such impacts when trying to use luxury hotels effectively in a sustainable development strategy for destination communities. Based on ethnographic interviews with Tibetan residents who live in a village near the Songtsam Shangri-la MGallery Collection operated by Accor in YunNan province, China, the study highlights the important issues in economic, sociocultural and environmental impacts as seen by those residents. These included unfair economic profit sharing, double-edged perception of luxury hotels and local livelihood, potential concerns about their religious beliefs and improving the status of women, and over-optimism about the possible negative influences on local environment, daily life, and the traditional consciousness of environmental preservation. The management implications for both local tourism authorities and hotel practitioners are discussed as well as the limitations of the research and the paper makes suggestions for future studies.

Adaptation strategies used by low-income residents affected by land use changes in Hanoi, Vietnam

Since Vietnam shifted to a market-economy in the 1980s, Hanoi has seen rapid urban expansion similar to that of other South East Asian cities - involving megaprojects, luxury developments, rural-to-urban migration, informal housing construction, and escalating speculation. Researchers have considered how unemployment and the disruption of community life followed the urbanization of rural areas. However, little has been said about how people adjusted their everyday life to cope with the changes. Through in-depth interviews, focus groups, participatory observation, oral histories, and surveys, this research investigated the adaptation strategies of low-income residents in the face of land use changes that are beyond their control. The main research site is Tay Ho district - previously a conglomeration of agricultural villages that has, in the past 20 years, witnessed rapid transformation through large-scale infrastructures, luxury housing, and smaller lodgings built individually for migrant workers. Four main adaptation strategies used by residents have been identified. First, people turn to food as a safety net. Running small street stalls, selling goods in local markets, and delivering to restaurants are common. Second, as farms transform into roads and buildings, people take advantage of public space to garden and socialize with neighbours. Third, gender division is significant as women are often excluded from the male-dominated land inheritance system and the formal economy, so they turn to informal trade, which offers autonomy and helps to develop social connections. Fourth, as land is confiscated and compensated by a lump sum of cash, people build social capital to persevere. This paper suggests that, in the context of rising globalization, the urbanization of the countryside, and the need to ensure the sustainability and inclusivity of cities, urban planners and policy-makers should take into account the way by which low-income residents continue to rely on environmental and social capital to adapt to changes.
 Keywords: urbanization; informality; adaptation; resilience; environmental capital; social capital; privatization.
 Received 18 July 2018, Revised 09 September 2018, Accepted 18 December 2018

First Insights on Peruvian Luxury Consumers

Peru is an emerging country showing strong potential for future luxury developments. It already holds luxury regular consumers, mainly in the Lima capital. However, it is currently approached in a standardized process by luxury firms, following what is done in other emerging markets for luxury. To be efficient, it is necessary to get more knowledge about Peruvian consumers. This is what this article aims at. After reviewing the historical background of the country along with its cultural dimensions, we present results from a two-stage analytic process based on data collected from secondary sources and interviews with consumers. We derive from that practical recommendations for luxury managers and propose some research questions and hypotheses to be further explored and tested.

Factors affecting site selection of access-restricted residential communities in Ankara

PurposeAnkara has experienced a recent rapid increase of residential communities that promise residents a comfortable lifestyle with strictly controlled entrances and several amenities. These luxury residential developments come in different forms, and are distributed unevenly across Ankara’s neighborhoods. Some neighborhoods become the center of gravity, and act like a magnet for these high-cost residential developments; however, most developers avoid making such costly investments in some other neighborhoods, which leads to an unfair distribution of profit across different locations in Ankara. The purpose of this paper is to examine the different factors affecting the site selection of different types of these real estate developments.Design/methodology/approachThe aim of this study has been to examine the factors affecting the site selection of different types of access-restricted housing developments through a multiple discriminant analysis (DA).FindingsThe results of the analysis revealed that distance from the city center and the unit price of the current housing stock are associated with high scores in the discrimination of neighborhoods of different types of residential communities.Practical implicationsThis paper implied a DA to create a better understanding of the site selection criteria behind access-restricted housing developments for policy makers to make better investment and management decisions.Originality/valueThe paper discusses the factors affecting the site selection of access-restricted residential communities in Ankara in order to show uneven distribution of profit across different locations caused by these developments.

Urban aloha ‘aina: Kaka‘ako and a decolonized right to the city

ABSTRACTThis essay critically examines the relationship between capitalism, development, and settler colonialism using Kakaʻako, an urban district of Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, as a case study. Given that Kakaʻako’s luxury development boom is occurring in conjunction with a severe cost-of-living crisis, I argue that the corporate-driven renewal of Kakaʻako constitutes a settler colonial project of erasure and accumulation through Indigenous dispossession. Crucially, the participation of Indigenous landowning entities in Kakaʻako's redevelopment highlights the need to understand how capitalist exploitation can operate across the settler-native binary through the deployment of a worldview that renders land a commodity. In contrast, the Kanaka Maoli worldview understands land as ʻāina - that which feeds. This understanding undergirds calls for aloha ʻāina, a relationship of responsibility and respect between the land and its people. In rural spaces, aloha ʻāina has been enacted as resistance against colonialism and development, but settler spatial regimes have largely been successful in framing Honolulu as ‘settled’ space. I argue that when exercised in the city, aloha ʻāina provides a historically situated, place-based, and radical framework for urban spatial justice.