This week I decided to visit the famous shopping street, Rodeo
Drive in Beverly Hills. This was an amazing place.
On our walk up to Rodeo Drive the streets were bustling with
people the roads were congested with cars, but on arrival this whole atmosphere
changed. The street was extremely peaceful and quiet, with very few cars even
on the roadside, let alone driving past. The pavements were very wide and the
streets were decorated with Christmas lights and there was even Christmas music
playing from speakers all along the drive. Each shop stocked some of the top
designer labels including Prada and Hugo Boss, all of which seemed very empty. The exclusive nature of the shopping street
almost seemed too exclusive because no one was going into them. It seemed like
these shops were more there for show rather than to sell their products. Outside one the shops was this custom Bugatti which is worth around $1million.
This week I wanted to use simplymap.com to identify the
areas of wealth across Los Angeles and having visited Rodeo Drive that day, I
wanted to use product markets to identify these variations.
The map above indicates the area of Beverly Hills has a very
high luxury product market. There is a “concentration of the rich” (David
Harvey). Comparing these figures with other areas of LA, it is clear to see that North West LA is home to the richest people in the city, those most willing to purchase luxury items. When focusing on the higher priced product market it is interesting to
see that the area of Beverly Hills is in the lowest percentile. (Below) This emphasises how rich the population is in this North-West area because their demand to buy higher priced products is pretty low.
This week I wanted to look at David Harvey’s ‘the urban
process of capitalism’ which ties in with the creative destruction that has
arisen from the Neo-liberal society as I feel this is appropriate for the area
of Beverly Hills. Walking down Rodeo drive I felt a feeling of exclusion. At
each doorway we passed stood a guard blocking the entry to the stores; many of
the stores even had their doors locked and they had to open them every time to
let people in. In the view of Harvey, the capitalists who “operate in a world
of Individualism” have created this area. The upper class individuals act upon
their own ‘self-interest’ and those who are able to purchase expensive clothing
have created a socially exclusive area for the rich and the guards prevent free
entry for the many of the less well-off citizens. The Bourgeoisies (in Marxian terms) have seemed
to privatise this area of Beverly Hills and prevent the lower class citizens to
enter.
This development of Rodeo Drive and other upper class
shopping areas, I feel, has been a direct result of neo-liberalism. It was
developed in the 1970’s; around the time neo-liberalism came into fashion in
the US. In reference to David Harvey, (2006) “there is an increasing variation
between the rich and poor in society” as a result of neo-liberalism and it “has
been a huge success for the upper class.” Both of these statements are true for
LA and we have seen an increasing inequality between the rich of Beverly Hills
and the poor of Inglewood. Not just in Beverly Hills, but there has been
growing social inequalities created by neo-liberalism all over the developed
world.
Harvey, D (2009), The process under Capitalism.
Harvey, D., 2006: Neo-liberalism as creative destruction. Geogr.
Ann., 88 B (2): 145–158.
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