Overseas investment into London: Imprint, impact and pied-à-terre urbanism. (June 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: DeVerteuil, Geoffrey; Manley, David
• Is Part Of: Environment and planning. Volume 49:Number 6(2017)
• Page Start: 1308
• Page End: 1323
• Publication Date: 2017-06
• Subjects: Super-rich -- London -- overseas investment -- the 1% -- pied-à-terre urbanism; City planning -- Periodicals; Regional planning -- Periodicals; City planning; Regional planning; Periodicals; 333.7
• DOI: 10.1177/0308518X17694361
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0308-518X

Abstract

This paper focuses on the spatial imprint and social impacts of the emerging geographies of concentrated overseas investment into London's high-end real estate market, particularly the boroughs of Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea. Framed by literatures on the 1% and the super-rich, and based on a mixed methodological approach of qualitative interviews with intermediaries and a quantitative mapping of overseas investors using 2011 census data, the results speak to the pervasive nature of "safe-haven" seeking in London real estate and its attendant transnational provenance set within a laissez-faire regulatory framework. In so doing, it makes an important contribution to the geographies of the super-rich, the class geographies of London, and the broader sense that overseas investors are producing what we call "pied-à-terre" urbanism which builds on a conventional gentrification framework (exclusionary displacement and a more affluent incoming group) but also exceeds it in several ways, leading to an increasingly socially attenuated landscape. This exceeding relates to: a different kind of rent gap, in that it is not speculative but safe-haven seeking, a guaranteed return on investment, and occurs without previous disinvestment; the agents are not traditional gentrifiers; the transnational nature of the process, with no attachment to particular places like in the traditional gentrification model; and a process focused on super-prime areas and completely independent of the existing gentrification process in London.