Luxified Troglodytism? Mapping the subterranean geographies of plutocratic London

摘要

The history of London has long been entwined with expansions of financial capital and the machinations of global plutocrats and their more proximate counterparts. However, what has happened in the decade since the global financial crisis is without precedent. London has been transformed into a city for global capital rather than one designed to meet the needs and aspirations of the majority of its denizens. The global figures on the distribution of wealth are, of course, well known and stark. Three sets of figures will suffice here. First, whereas, in 2010, Oxfam calculated that it would take the combined wealth of the richest 388 people in the world to be equivalent to the combined wealth of the poorest 50%, by 2017 it was calculated to be just twenty-six. To be clear, the richest twenty-six people in the world possess as much wealth as the poorest 3.8 billion. Second, in 2008 there were estimated to be some 8.6 million of what the financial services industry term 'High Net Worth Individuals' (HNWIs) distributed across the globe, but by 2017 this figure had more than doubled to 18.1 million, 575,000 of whom live in the UK.5 The great bulk of these - over half-a-million - in and around London. Third, the most recent 'rich list' produced by the Sunday Times Magazine reveals that London contains the greatest number of resident (£) billionaires - ninety-three in 2017, compared to New York with sixty-six, San Francisco with sixty-four, Hong Kong with sixty-three, and Moscow with fifty-five.