Abstract
As noted earlier, wealth is a way of measuring environmental impact, and this chapter expands on this by looking at the link between wealth and complexity. It investigates how wealth is expressed in the built environment and how this relates to developing inequalities in societies. It looks at how investment in buildings was involved in the 2008 global financial crisis and the changing relationship between house owners and landlords. Flipping is also discussed. The chapter continues by looking into personalisation of the dwelling and aspirations of wealth as a driver of this. This leads to a discussion of house size and the proliferation of large dwellings with few occupants in some societies. The next step is to look at the reading of wealth in commercial and manufacturing buildings, including the quest to own the tallest building. The chapter moves to a discussion of underused buildings, including second homes and ghost cities, as well as considering the cities of the dead. It ends by considering the relationship between wealth and monuments in the built environment, noting that the built environment is a means of wealth creation and concentration, with all the problems that follow, not least the fact that inequalities are made visible in it.
All that glitters is not gold
Proverb
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Garcia, E., Vale, B., Vale, R. (2021). The Architecture of Wealth. In: Collapsing Gracefully: Making a Built Environment that is Fit for the Future. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77783-8_10
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