Living it up in the ‘new world city’: High-rise development and the promise of liveability,
2013, Annals of Leisure Research, DOI:10.1080/11745398.2013.840946
Authors
Associate Professor Simone Fullagar*
Corresponding author
Department of Tourism, Leisure, Hotel and Sport Management
Griffith University
170 Kessels Rd, Nathan
Phone: +61 7 3735 6712
Email: s.fullagar@griffith.edu.au
Ms Adele Pavlidis
Department of Tourism, Leisure, Hotel and Sport Management
Griffith University,
Parklands Drive, Southport, Qld, 4215, Australia
Phone: +61 7 5552 7672
Email: a.pavlidis@griffith.edu.au
Dr Sacha Reid
Department of Tourism, Leisure, Hotel and Sport Management
Griffith University
170 Kessels Rd, Nathan
Phone: +61 7 3735 6559
Email: s.reid@griffith.edu.au
Dr Kathleen Lloyd
Department of Tourism, Leisure, Hotel and Sport Management
Griffith University
170 Kessels Rd, Nathan
Phone: +61 7 3735 6651
Email: k.lloyd@griffith.edu.au
1
Abstract
The growth of high-rise developments raises questions about how the emotional and social
leisurescape of the city is evoked, produced and represented. In this article we examine how
advertising images and texts promoting new high-rise developments produce notions of
‘liveability’ through the depiction of idealised spatial experiences that typify urban leisure
lifestyles. The focus of our analysis is three high-rise developments in Brisbane, a selfproclaimed ‘New World City’, and the capital of Queensland in Australia’s northeast. We
identify how marketing images evoke particular emotions to construct desirable relationships
between consumers, domestic space and urban leisurescapes. Our analysis revealed social
tensions between different constructions of the liveable city and the implications for leisure
planning. While Brisbane City Council sought to be inclusive in its planning for urban
liveability, developers imagined urban renewal projects through exclusive lifestyle practices
and normalised consumer identities (white, middle class, heterosexual, without children).
Keywords: urban leisure, marketing, liveability, high-rise development, emotion, affect
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Introduction
Residential property developers, marketers and real estate agents mobilise notions of
sophistication, cosmopolitanism and differentiated style, as they sell ‘high-rise living’ within
the symbolic economy of the liveable ‘world city’ (Cronin & Hetherington, 2008; Shaw,
2006). As signifiers of contemporary identities and aspirations, advertising images of
towering apartment buildings and their interiors work to elicit consumer desires and trace out
the spatial parameters of imagined urban lifestyles. As noted by Bavinton (2010: 238), ‘there
is a growing consciousness of the need for cities to project an image of affluence, amenity
and culture alongside attractions of leisure and consumption’ (italics in original). Historically,
Australian leisure provision was influenced by the ‘rational recreation’ movement that sought
to re-imagine, or ‘beautify’, the city to ‘improve’ the conduct of the poor and reduce
overcrowding, disease and social unrest (Veal, Darcy & Lynch, 2012). In the current context
of global capitalism and advanced liberalism, urban leisure is deeply intertwined with the
normalised pleasures produced through consumer culture and aspirational lifestyles pursued
through the intersecting domains of work, play and home. The term urban lifestyle has come
to replace the notion of leisure in everyday discourse as it signifies more ‘liquid’ experiences
and desires for individual autonomy and identity, high mobility, proximity to work and
multiple forms of social connection (Blackshaw, 2010; Rojek, 2010; Chaney, 1996). Urban
sociology, cultural studies and geography offer a means of exploring changing
representations of the emotional landscapes of the city as they are imagined through private
and public leisurescapes of advertising (Browne & Bakshi, 2011; Davidson, Bondi, & Smith,
2005). As Caudwell and Browne (2011) have suggested the spatial turn within leisure studies
has focussed attention on the space-time processes that mediate urban experiences, identities
and social relationships. We suggest that particular leisurescapes are produced at the
intersection of embodied spatial practices and the symbolic representations (discourse, image,
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text) that shape the cultural meanings of city places in the context of global capital. In this
article we contribute to the interdisciplinary work on urban leisure cultures by examining
how the advertising of new high-rise developments circulates notions of ‘liveability’ through
leisurescapes that connect home and urban lifestyles. In the words of Michel de Certeau
(1984: xxiii) advertising images and text are ‘strategic representations offered to the public’
(italics in original) as the product of particular rationalities that map out the discursive
parameters of urban development and residential consumption. From a cultural studies
perspective we argue that the act of individual consumption (property purchase/rental) is
intertwined with the symbolic production of images by marketers in the property industry and
local tourism and events. In this sense we position individuals as consumers who are actively
engaged in the production of meaning about urban lifestyles and by extension ourselves as
consumers of advertising in the research process (Cheng, 2001).
Over the last decade the term ‘liveability’ has emerged within a range of urban
planning and policy documents to signify a range of valued characteristics of urban places
(often measured through a range of indexes). For example, the Australian Government
defines liveability as ‘the way the urban environment supports the quality of life and
wellbeing of communities’ (2011: 54). Despite the public discourse on liveability there has
been little exploration of the way leisure experiences and aspirations are evoked through
representations of urban renewal or development in Australia. Hence, we situate our analysis
of high rise property advertisements within the context of debates about liveability and the
rise of the ‘compact city’ as a key focus in Australian urban planning (Jensen, 2011). We
argue that tensions exist in the way that cities and the leisure practices of citizens are
produced through the texts of developers and government planners that aim to represent
liveability and urban lifestyles.
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Urban Leisurescapes
There is small body of Australian research that has investigated how leisure spaces,
provision and participation contribute to, or detract from, the ‘liveable’ quality of
communities. Jenkins and Young (2008) have examined resident perceptions of leisure
opportunities in outer suburban developments in relation to issues about the inadequacy of
recreation planning and provision. Others, such as Choy and Prineas (2006), have also
explored the environmental and social issues relating to open space planning and park
provision for recreation in light of growing population pressures within South East
Queensland. Within the socio-cultural literature Bavinton’s (2010) work on the night time
economy provides a nuanced exploration of how Australian urban cultures of consumption
(streetscapes, nightclubs, music, alcohol) are discursively regulated, embodied and contested
spaces. Importantly, this work identifies how the leisure practices of highly mobile,
individualised citizen consumers are shaped by commercial leisure providers and the
‘civilising’ desires of urban governance initiatives. Alcohol consumption is one example that
brings into play the tensions around notions of ‘liveability’ that are used to promote the city
as a vital, hedonic leisurescape of individualised freedom. Bavinton (2010) illustrates how
urban leisure spaces are also defined by temporal meanings that associate ‘night time’ with
particular ways of moving, consuming and socialising. Yet, leisure consumption also renders
city spaces problematic in terms of ‘social control’ in ways that echo earlier desires for
‘rational’ forms of urban recreation.
In this article we extend the socio-cultural analysis of leisure to contribute to
interdisciplinary research across urban and leisure studies by analysing how representations
of spatial relationships are imbued with a range of emotions or affects. As Davidson et al
(2005) argue, spatial experiences are often rationalised in ways that ignore the question of
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how emotions or affects are experienced, represented and shaped by social norms. Following
the work of cultural theorist Sarah Ahmed (2004), we use emotion and affect interchangeably
to emphasise a ‘performative’ understanding rather than the interiority of feelings. We
acknowledge the complex range of disciplinary interpretations around affect and emotion
(see Wetherell, 2012). Ahmed’s approach (2004:194) examines the affective dimension of
social relations that assumes ‘emotions are not transparent, and they are not simply about a
relation of the subject to itself, or even the relation of the subject to its own history’. In this
sense, the ‘affective turn’ within cultural studies and geography posits ‘a non-objectifying
view of emotions as relational flows, fluxes or currents, in-between people and places rather
than “things” or “objects” to be studied or measured’ (Davidson, et al., 2005: 3). We argue
that to understand the way liveability is represented in the contemporary urban landscape
requires a focus on the ‘relational’ meanings of leisure in time and space (leisurescapes). For
example, the privatised space of home in high-rise living exists in relation to the mixed nature
of surrounding commercial and public leisure spaces that offer day and night time urban
experiences. In addition, citizens are discursively positioned as residential consumers of
property through constructed identities in urban contexts that reveal social relations relating
to gender, class, sexuality and cultural differences (Scraton and Watson, 1998).
Serreli (2009: 50) has noted how emotions are often heightened ‘by the creation and
expansion of new spaces of culture, leisure and consumption, which become catalysts of new
urban development and the new image of the city’. While growing cities, such as Brisbane,
place increasing emphasis on the creation of leisurescapes (such as restaurants, bars, markets,
galleries, laneway festivals, riverfront promenades) they are engaged in a ‘processes of city
reimagining’ (Bavinton, 2010: 238). And, we argue, this process is an affective production of
meaning with implications for how cities come to be understood as ‘liveable’ spaces for
diverse urban residents. The marketing images of high-rise developments in Brisbane
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generate affective responses – they are impressive, readers respond in a variety of ways
through the spatial imagination. Thrift notes that ‘affect has become part of a reflexive loop
which allows more and more sophisticated interventions in various registers of urban life’
(2004: 58). In addition, Ahmed argues that emotions connect the self and the social creating
‘the very effect of an inside and an outside’ Emotions work to delineate who and what is ‘in’
and who and what is ‘out’ (Ahmed, 2004: 6). Hence, it is not only the types of consumers and
behaviours represented in marketing images that are important, but also the range of emotions
invoked through these images (and what or who is not included). In marketing
representations of inside/outside, public/private, leisure/work, consumer/non-consuming
other, emotions are used to signify the way the developments bring the outside in and the
public to the door of their new abode.
Imagining Liveable Spaces and Consumers
The multiplicity of images used to market new apartments, with their sparkling
kitchens and colour coordinated interiors, are plentiful in the growing sub-tropical city of
Brisbane, Australia. They adorn billboards on the dusty development sites marked as urban
renewal precincts. Glossy images feature in the property sections of newspapers, in brochures
proclaiming excellent yields and capital growth in ‘The Next Evolution’ (CB Richard Ellis,
2011) and on revolving web pages that draw the city backdrop, as a playground for leisure
and consumption, into close proximity. Bavinton (2010: 239) has argued that leisure in the
city is often presented ‘as part of an ostensibly unified city identity that plays the role of
marketing message’. Langlois (2012: 1) also refers to the ‘public image’ of particular
dwelling types that are conjured through this carefully constructed cultural imaginary. Images
capturing the visual, iconic nature of city dwellings have had symbolic importance at least
since the rise of the desirable single family home in the 1950’s (Muzziio & Halper, 2001 in
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Langlois, 2012). Images of residential developments have come to signify luxury, lifestyle
desires and entrepreneurial selfhood in the context of global capitalism as they are produced
and circulated by property marketers, city and tourism promoters. Images have powerful
discursive effects as they come alive through the consumption practices of subjects (who are
gendered, racialised, sexualised, aged) who ‘read’ images and co-constitute the spatiality of
the city as they imagine inhabiting a high-rise development (Kearn, 2010). As Massey writes,
‘space does not exist prior to identities/entities and their relations’, rather, ‘identities/entities,
the relations “between” them, and the spatiality which is part of them, are all co-constitutive’
(2011: 10).
In conceptualising the future residential space that consumers may one day inhabit,
marketing images of high-rise developments play with the diversity of apartments, common
areas, leisure facilities, green spaces and vistas beyond, ‘as the dimension of multiple
trajectories, a simultaneity of stories-so-far’ (Massey, 2011: 24). Hopes, dreams, and
aspirations of a different, ‘better’, ‘brighter’ future are given a distinct spatial form – the
future is a new, contemporary, high-rise way of life. Jansson and Lagerkvist, in their visual
analysis of high-rise vistas, write, ‘cities, dreams and visions about the future have been – and
are currently – afforded a distinct spatial form’ (2009: 27). High density urban space becomes
a site of possibility within an affective economy that promises greater ‘liveability’, autonomy,
leisure, proximity, excitement, engagement and the satisfaction of a ‘good’ life. The Brisbane
City Council articulates the ‘feel’ of their ‘world city’ on their website: ‘By 2026, Brisbane
will be a vibrant, 24-hour cultural city that attracts and generates a robust cultural life and
applies its creativity to generating innovative solutions for sustainable urban living’ (Brisbane
City Council, 2012).
The images presented by marketers and developers appeal to consumer aspirations for
elaborate amenities, style and leading edge design and the notion of urbanity that is practiced
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through a leisure lifestyle involving high culture and popular entertainment (Langlois, 2012).
Central to this process is ‘affective persuasion’ which is the counterpart to logic-and-evidence
based persuasion (Langlois, 2012). Jansson and Legerkvist argue that ‘neither the mediation
of urban spaces, nor the “urban spectacle” can be fully grasped without paying close attention
to the role of affect and fantasies and to their importance for political and commercial
interests’ (2009: 26). In our analysis of marketing images we consider how felt meanings of
home and liveability are also produced in relation to the world city as an ‘entrepreneurial’
space inhabited by consumer desires for ‘lifestyle maximisation’ (Serreli, 2009: 54-55). As
Bavinton (2010: 239) notes, there is a turn towards an ‘entrepreneurial style of governance
with increasing emphasis placed on cultural and leisure dimensions’. In this way we move
beyond an interest simply in the product or commodity form which can be sold (the dollar
value of property). Although we do acknowledge the all-pervasive commercial imperative
that informs the development of cities as hubs of trade, politics and more recently, urban
renewal. New cities, such as Brisbane, have been subject to critique based upon decades of
destruction of historic buildings and ‘authentic places’, in favour of ‘homogenized landscapes
in which place-based identities were artificially and inauthentically constructed’ (Oakes,
1993: 51). Rather than debate whether representations of high-rise living reflect ‘authentic or
inauthentic’ urban spaces, we examine the way notions of sophistication, leisure and
differentiated ‘[life]style’ are mobilised through the ‘dream world of consumerism’
(Blackshaw, 201: 91) that contextualises liveability.
Brisbane: At home in the ‘New World City’
The geographic focus of this study is Brisbane, the capital city of Queensland and one
of Australia’s fastest growing regions. Its population grew by 125% in the decade to 2010
(profile.id, 2012; Stimson & Taylor, 1999). Brisbane is a self-proclaimed ‘New World City’
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(Jensen, 2011) and has used this by-line in marketing campaigns since 2009. This branding
exercise has focused attention on key aspects such as the economy, communication, the
liveability of the city, population growth and the council’s grassroots approach to urban
planning (Jensen, 2011). The growth in Brisbane has been typified by low density, urban
sprawl (Stimson & Taylor, 1999), but with the new millennium there has been a growing
focus largely on high-rise developments in the city, along the river front and close to leisure
opportunities and surrounding suburbs (McCrea & Walters, 2012). Urban development has
continued to focus on the renewal of public space and commercial leisure opportunities, in
particular on the emergence of a more ‘sustainable’, ‘liveable’ and ‘creative’ community.
Yet, quantified measures of liveability tell a different story as Brisbane dropped to 21 out of
140 world cities in 2011 (from its peak at 16 in 2009) (Moore & Hurst, 2011).
Few studies have explored the way the meaning of liveability is produced within the
context of a highly mediatised urban imagination that is shaped by advertising images of
high-rise living and lifestyle commodities (Cronin, 2006). Analysis of the marketing of new
high-rise developments offers another perspective on the way city lifestyles as sustainable,
consumptive, and socially connected (or not) are related to the development of urban leisure
and a changing sense of home connected to residential space. We acknowledge the
complexity of meaning that is produced around domestic spaces that are marketed as
potential high rise ‘homes’ although we do not have scope to explore the extensive literature
on the construction of home as a spatial, familial, cultural and affective notion (Dufty-Jones,
2012; Easthope, 2004; Lloyd, 2008). Veal, Darcy and Lynch (2012) have documented how
home based leisure practices have changed with shifts in the cultural meaning and design of
domestic spaces and gender roles, the rise of consumption, and the emergence of technology.
Hence, it is not merely the physical structure of a house or apartment, or its location, but
rather the range of home based practices that create meaning (the functional, pleasurable and
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intimate) in relation to the world beyond. Home owners often make economic decisions when
purchasing property not as purely rational subjects, hence, the success or failure of urban
regeneration projects is connected to the construction of an imagined and emotional
landscape (Lloyd, 2008). As Brisbane, and other cities in Australia and elsewhere in the
world increasingly adopt a ‘compact city’ approach to urban planning and development, it is
timely to examine how the cultural meaning of domestic space is produced through the highrise commodity produced and sold to the citizen consumer.
Methodology
The research undertaken for this study involved the selection of three inner urban high
rise developments and a textual analysis of publicly available images and discourse from
marketing for each development (Cronin, 2006; Pink, 2008). Collaboratively we sought to
identify the culturally connotative meanings signified through (denotative) representations of
high rise living spaces in terms of the visibility and invisibility of certain identities (gender,
culture, age, sexuality, status) and leisure practices that evoked affective responses for us as
researchers (Gibson & Brown, 2009). Throughout the research a reflexive methodological
approach was employed and we acknowledge that our own interpretative position is shaped
by our gender and ethnicity (all white women), diverse ages and sexual identities (Dupuis,
1999). We brought our respective differences into our semiotic and embodied analysis of how
the key signifiers of home, identity and urban leisurescapes felt and moved us in different
ways (Alvesson and Skoldberg, 2000). Our analytic process was collaborative as we each
‘read’ the images of each development through our own experience and social position
(Prosser, 1996). Our analysis emerged from further reflection on differences and similarities
in our four sets of comments that enabled us to identify how constructions of ‘consumer
identity’ evoked different affective responses to particular images of high rise living. This
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process led us to critically reflect upon the white, heterosexist and age denying norms that
were connoted in images of high rise developments. Our semiotic analysis revealed the
signifiers (images and text) of status, prestige, home, inclusion and exclusion of identities and
we paid attention to our embodied, affective responses to different leisurescapes (anger,
pleasure, compassion).
The collaborative process of analysis was produced through a
cyclical process of identifying denoted meanings, sharing different interpretations of cultural
connotations and reinterpreting each ‘site’ as it was positioned in relation to the other ‘sites’.
We acknowledge the situatedness of our analysis and how alternative readings may be
generated by another research team or consumers from different social positions. As Gibson
and Brown (2009: 151) suggest ‘The construction of an interpretation is not a universal
phenomenon that everyone will undertake in the same way, but nor is it an entirely
individualistic one’.
The three sites chosen for analysis in this article were all new high-rise developments
that were selected due to their ‘liveability’ proposition and location in either Brisbane’s
Central Business District (CBD) or within 10 kilometres of the city centre. All three
properties incorporated high-density apartment living with adjacent mixed use facilities and
services (such as, retail, transport, leisure and entertainment) and yet they constructed quite
distinctly urban lifestyles within their marketing material. The purposive selection of the
three developments enabled a comparison of differences and similarities in the representation
of liveability.
Site One is Circa Nundah. Nundah was one of the first settlements in Brisbane, and
has a long working class history (Hess & Lombardi, 2004) – hence its main shopping strip
along Sandgate road is known as ‘Nundah village’. It is located 7km from the CBD as the
furthest of the three sites and is in close proximity to two train stations, a major bus station
and highways and roads leading into the city and to the nearby airport. Branded with the by12
line, ‘The Next Evolution’, Circa is a smaller high-rise of 10 storeys, with localised views of
the surrounding suburb. It is described by the developer as: ‘Vibrant and liveable, Nundah
Village is Brisbane’s best kept secret’. Nundah has recently been re-zoned for further highdensity development and is earmarked as a site for transit orientated development (TOD).
TOD’s are typified by the potential for ‘increasing transit ridership, enhancing economic
development, and establishing a ‘sense of place’ at transportation nodes’ (CB Richard Ellis,
2011). As an ‘up and coming’ area, Nundah has a median house price of $A520,000 and a
median unit price of $A359,000 (Hess & Lombardi, 2004).
The second site, the RNA Showgrounds residential redevelopment, aptly named
‘Showground Hill’, is located in Bowen Hills, an established suburb on the fringe of the
CBD. This site was first developed in the late 1800s as a showground, featuring agricultural
shows, local crafts, carnival rides and attractions. The area has seen huge growth in recent
years with the population doubling between the years 1996 to 2006 (Property Solutions,
2012). It is also designated as a ‘Special Entertainment Precinct Core Area’ (profile.id, 2012)
due to its range of entertainment facilities, both commercial and public, including the RNA
Showground. During 2010 more than one million people attended events at the site (Brisbane
City Council, 2006). The RNA showgrounds is currently under development by Lend Lease,
a major Australian development firm, which is investing over $A2.9 billion dollars into this
22 hectare site, along with strong support from the Australian government (RNA
Showgrounds, 2012). As well as the development of public spaces and pathways, the RNA
showgrounds site includes plans for several high-rise buildings as part of ‘Showground Hill’,
the first of which will be called ‘The Green’ (The Royal National Agricultural and Industrial
Association of Queensland, 2012). The developers state, ‘The Green will feature five midrise buildings surrounding lush private gardens. This unique location will offer sanctuary,
while harmonising with the wider RNA Showgrounds redevelopment’ (Lend Lease, 2012).
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The third site chosen for analysis is ‘Infinity’, a new development by Meriton located
in the Brisbane CBD, close to a major train station, the Brisbane River and within walking
distance of major art galleries, sport and entertainment venues. Due for completion in 2013,
Infinity is to be the tallest residential tower in Brisbane at a total of 262 metres high (Lend
Lease, 2012). As such it includes, and heavily promotes, its more expansive views of the city
to entice potential residents and owners. Infinity is also the only building in this study located
in the CBD of Brisbane, which was traditionally the prime site for high-rise developments.
Meriton has been developing new buildings in Sydney, Brisbane and the Gold Coast for over
forty years (Meriton, 2012a) and Infinity is their third major high-rise development in the
Brisbane CBD. This development is aligned closely with the Brisbane City Council’s vision
for the CBD. For example, the Brisbane City Centre neighbourhood plan seeks to create:
compact, high density building which take advantage of its views and vistas, parks and
heritage and river setting (Meriton, 2012b). In many ways, Infinity is a ‘conventional’ highrise development when compared to the other two sites.
Our textual analysis of the marketing images and discourse for each development
focused on the specific identity produced around each site: The Urban Village, Home and the
City Gaze, and the Cosmopolitan Lifestyle. Images from the developers’ websites were
downloaded, photographs were taken of billboards and marketing brochures collected from
displays for analysis. Due to copyright issues we have provided web addresses for each site
that was examined rather than images. The research team examined the materials from each
development site to identify specific statements, metaphors and recurring images of social
subjects and leisure practices that evoked affect. The second phase of analysis involved
comparison of each site to identify differences and similarities between the representation of
spaces (and what was not represented) within and beyond home (Kraftl, 2010). The three
developments each mobilised particular constructions of residential space as ‘home’ for
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particular kinds of resident consumers. Within each site we identify particular lifestyle
relations that are constructed between the domestic interior and the exterior relation with the
city or immediate suburb. Second, we examine how consumer identities are produced through
images that evoke high-rise living (Cronin and Hetherington, 2008; Rose, 1999).
Analysis: Living it up
Circa Nundah: The Urban Village
The marketing images of the interior domestic space of the Circa apartments evoke a
sense of home as private leisure space through the placement of new furniture and objects
that speak of ‘style’, ‘sophistication’ and ‘life’ (http://www.circanundah.com.au/). One key
image titled ‘The Next Evolution’ is an expansive shot of a private roof top outdoor
entertainment area at sunset with stylish couches, dining table and chairs, accompanied by a
bottle and two glasses sitting on a low coffee table. This minor detail allows the reader to
imagine stepping into a relaxed, yet exclusive space to share their leisure time away with
friends and family from the demands of work. The balconies of individual apartments in
images of the whole building include furniture and individuals gazing on the urban scene
below (shopping, cafes, district views). This focus on the ‘use’ of exterior spaces highlights
the fluid relationships between inside and outside. Both the balconies and the retail spaces at
ground level offer to extend an individualised sense of home into the shared space of the
apartment complex and streetscape. This spatial relationship foregrounds both sociality and
consumption at the intersecting points where the building meets the world beyond. It is akin
to the front garden of a traditional single dwelling which provides the promise of
opportunities to meet, mingle and perhaps form friendships with other residents (without the
time demands of yard maintenance). In photos of the individualised space of apartments the
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connection to green space is maintained via ‘outside’ views of surroundings, such as a
grassed area and nearby trees.
The relationship between consumer, home and city produced through the images of
Circa is signified through references to the desirability of a ‘cafe culture’ lifestyle. Curiously
there is an absence of consumers featuring in the actual apartments, other than on landscape
images of balconies. Rather, people are interacting within retail/quasi public leisure spaces,
drinking coffee, shopping or walking through. In this sense, Circa promises to provide the
lifestyle choices and leisure freedoms characteristic of daily urban life (as opposed to the
CBD where one’s work may be based). It is a commodified leisurescape with shopping,
eating and entertaining appearing as key lifestyle experiences embedded within marketing
material, although specific foods and shops are not presented explicitly. Consumers are
positioned within the enjoyable outdoor sub-tropics taking advantage of the ‘lifestyle’
afforded to them through the location of this development and its proximity to public space
and commercial entertainment.
Interestingly, there are no views of the city or surrounding areas in the Circa
marketing material. This visual construction encourages an insular view of the development
as a local place: as Nundah ‘village’. The twin ideals of local ‘community’ and urban
‘sophistication’ are evoked through the discourse of village life and aspirational images of
designer furniture and home wares. The very localised type of sophistication may entice
residents already living in the suburb to consider buying into the development. Yet, invisible
in the marketing materials are older people or children of any age, in both retail and private
‘home’ spaces. Consumer identities are represented very vaguely in Circa marketing material.
From rather blurry images of seemingly highly mobile consumers we can see idealised
‘young’, slim and well-groomed Caucasians who are either depicted alone or as heterosexual
couples. There are no families, older people, or different ethnicities or sexualities represented.
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Previous research has consistently shown that high rise developers’ perceive that, ‘The
people we sell to are pre- and post- kids...basically they’re without kids’ (Fincher, 2004:
334). Diversity is conspicuous by its absence and this evoked a range of affects (dismay,
annoyance, anger, disappointment) in the research team as we positioned ourselves in relation
to the normalised subject who appears entitled to an urban leisure lifestyle. Also invisible is
the relationship between the development and key social and landscape features of the
surrounding area that do not fit with the ‘liveable’ image of Circa. These include, for
example, the range of charity and commercial shops, social and health services, large roads
that cut through the village and diverse people living in a mix of public and private
apartments and single dwellings.
The Green: An Urban Retreat
Out of the three developments included in this research the Showground Hill
apartments, ‘The Green’, most intimately evokes a sense of home as a leisurely retreat within
the city (http://www.showgroundhill.com.au/). An artist’s impression is offered of an
apartment looking from the outside in. There is a white, heterosexual couple standing inside
their new home in an image that is titled ‘Welcome’. The man is holding the woman from
behind as they both enjoy the warmth of the domestic space, while looking out to the
surrounding city and gazing upon what it has to offer. Their home is bathed in light, with
comfortable furniture stylishly placed around the apartment, while large glass windows open
up to the sub-tropical night air. A bathroom is presented as ‘lived in’ via the placement of
towels, shampoo and other body products. It is spotlessly clean, yet the inclusion of these
objects creates a ‘home’, rather than merely a place for short term accommodation or a good
investment. Marketing images position a couple pondering their new urban life within ‘The
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Green’ as they gaze through glass windows across their liveable outdoor spaces connected to
‘nature’ via common garden areas.
The emphasis on the individualised leisure space of home stands in contrast to the
Infinity development (as we discuss below) with de-personalised interiors and an outward
gaze towards the cityscape below. The comfortable emotions of ‘home’ (feeling safe,
belonging, familial space) as a private leisure retreat work to distance the consumer from the
demands of urban life (work, traffic congestion, crowding), while also evoking the exciting
leisure possibilities of the city (night time sociability, embodied experience, display of
identity, status and taste). In The Green the sense of private retreat from work and public
leisure spaces is framed in relation to the ‘heart’ of the city that is visible as a backdrop.
According to Jansson and Lagerkvist (2009: 28) ‘the gazes of people admiring a city skyline
are mediatised, that is, scripted through public discourse (e.g., television) as well as more
private media channels (e.g., holiday photos).’
The portrayal of people as couples socialising or as family groups, and also alone,
signifies the developer’s focus on the leisure desires of the ‘target market’ for connection and
solitude. In addition, images of the surrounding garden showcase the development’s inclusion
of outdoor green space in an aesthetic aspect of home based leisure experiences (minus time
needed to maintain gardens). The ability to interact in green space, to relax or have a BBQ
with friends and family is evoked via images of people ‘enjoying’ the space, allowing
consumers to imagine themselves embodying a pleasurable sub-tropical lifestyle. We suggest
that consumers are being marketed a ‘landscaped’ construction of home based leisure
identities that emphasise the emotional value of private sociability and outdoor entertaining.
Images also focus on the movement of consumers through public spaces and walkways that
connect the development to the streetscape. People gather in pairs and family groups,
pointing out things to their children or other people. Others are alone carrying their shopping
18
bags through the common spaces signifying the easy integration of daily tasks into urban
lifestyles. There are people seated on benches, although many are walking through the
landscaped open space on their way to or from city amenities. This appropriation of public
space in the marketing of private interests aligns with real estate advertising analysis in New
Zealand and Hong Kong (Fincher, 2004). The inclusion of public space to sell the ‘lifestyle’
elements of a development have been commonly utilised by developers to market high-rise
apartments.
Alternatively, consumers pictured within apartments, or on balconies, are presented in
a number of ways that highlight a variety of lifestyle options for potential consumers. Images
show residents connected in a range of ways with their communities of interest (for example,
work, study, leisure or social groups) when desired, but not necessarily in terms of physical
proximity. For example, in one composite image titled ‘Live’ a man is relaxing in the
confines of his apartment alone but engaged with others in different spaces via technology
(Ipad). This connection with the external environment or city is multiple, embodied and
virtual. It is much like the city view experienced by the couple – available on demand when
wanted or needed, but also able to be ‘escaped’ to some degree. Yet despite the explicit
relation between (the imagined) consumer and the city and ‘outside world’, most images
representing ‘The Green’ highlight a sense of localised place where social connections occur.
It is a self-sufficient leisurescape where emotional relationships and individual consumption
(retail, technology, media) are enjoyed. Active leisure is absent from the images, as is
engagement with the city and its diverse inhabitants (homeless people, commuters,
consumers, tourists, workers) outside of the development zone. The notion of ‘liveability’
that is evoked through images of ‘The Green’ promise proximity to entertainment and
consumption, connectedness with others and individualised private comfort that exists
beyond the complex social milieu of the city.
19
The reimaging of this brownfield site into a contemporary urban leisurescape
employs a rather narrow range of consumer identities. In a similar way to the Circa
development all people represented in The Green images are Caucasian in appearance and
wearing clothing signifying middle class identities. However, the images do represent a
diverse range of ages, from babies with their mothers, to fathers with toddlers, to younger
couples and people on their own, to ‘older’ people. The consumer within these images of
high-rise development is highly normalised through narrowly selected images that evoke
whiteness, status and the display of prosperity. This is not surprising considering how images
are created, defined and approved by property developers, marketers and real estate agents
who aim to target a particular market. However, the lack of cultural diversity stands in an
ironic relationship to the multicultural character of Australian society and the ‘cosmopolitan’
urban lifestyles of ‘creative cities’ that has become a significant discourse shaping urban
regeneration in Brisbane (Cheng, 2001; Collins & Kearns, 2008; Jensen, 2011). The
whiteness inherent in the marketing images works to exclude those who are positioned as
‘Other’ from the enjoyable, interactive social milieu that is constructed around high-rise
lifestyles and from being positioned as potential owners or tenants.
Infinity: Home and the City Gaze
The Infinity development is centrally located within the busy CBD hub and yet
consumers
are
invisible
in
the
marketing
material
(http://www.meriton.com.au/properties/infinity-apartments-brisbane-cbd/). However, there
does exist an invitation to imagine the relation between oneself as consumer, the private
space of home and the public spaces of the city that are visible below and beyond the
building. The website celebrates height, ‘Infinity will soar 262 metres high and boasts views
unmatched’. Views of the cityscape and distant mountains feature in an outward gaze, whilst
20
there is no reference to the building itself – a single tower. Rooms are stylish, clinically neat
with few signifiers of domestic warmth; home in this development is a place above, removed
from the wider complexities of individual and community relationships. The apartments float
against a blue sky as detached, autonomous spaces, connected by the flow of sub-tropical
light that moves through extensive glass windows (Wise, 2012). As Wise (2012: 119) notes
‘this lightness of space, the bigness of the sky, the clarity of the air also encourage habits of
distance looking, of vistas, of gazing out towards horizons.’ Green space is not included in
any of the images, except for limited views of trees and parks seen in the distance. The city
vistas below conjure the excitement of the city as a leisurescape oriented around
entertainment and spectacle - sport stadiums, the river promenade, and the ‘bright lights’ of
the night time economy with hospitality and bars nearby. The imagined Infinity consumer,
short or long term resident or investor, is purchasing proximity to the city with its promise of
luxury, comfort, ease of travel to work and commodified leisure opportunities. Towering over
the city, residents can imagine themselves amidst the lively, rhythmic flows of the city, whilst
remaining safe in their ‘home’. However, the intimate space of home and the conventional
social living space is missing with no images of people in the building or in the surrounding
area. This ‘invisibility’ adds a layer of ambiguity about the meaning and practices of home
within the context of an urban lifestyle. The absence of people may also reflect the marketer’s
wish to appeal to a wider target market in order to sell the 546 apartments within one
building. Infinity’s price points are at the lower to middle end of the apartment market stock.
Of all the images used to promote Infinity there are very few that show the inside of
the apartments. There is an image of a bedroom, spotlessly clean, with neutral coloured bed
linen, and no other sign of life other than the linen and pillows on the bed. There is little
evidence of personalised domestic space - life and leisure occurs elsewhere. The apartment is
a place to reside rather than a ‘home’ where one invests emotion and self-expression. The
21
apartments look out over the city with large glass windows showcasing the view which can
be seen from the bed. This lightness of space also encourages a distant gaze out towards the
horizon and there is little sense of the risky, fearful side of city life below (Wise, 2012;
Kearn, 2010). Another interior image shows a lounge area and adjacent empty kitchen. There
is a repetition of large, uncluttered spaces in the images and the distinctiveness of a night sky
view of the cityscape through glass walls. There are some signs of ‘life’, fruit in a bowl,
flowers in a vase, pictures hung on the wall. These objects and room adornments are ‘stylish’
and appear expensive. Yet the inclusion of objects does not have the same effect as they do in
images of the ‘The Green’ and ‘Circa’ developments. Instead the rooms within the Infinity
marketing material are quite stark and expansive. They appear devoid of life despite the
inclusion of objects and furniture. The spatial arrangement appears more flexible than the
other developments and this gives an impression of openness and possibility. While the idea
of ‘home’ is vaguely defined and evokes a clinical feeling rather than the warmth of
habitation or interaction, there are no images of consumers and hence no exclusive or
normalised representations of identity. Home figures as domestic space against a backdrop of
city views and amenities that characterise a hedonic leisurescape where entertainment, events
and spectacles give shape to the notion of liveability.
Discussion
Property developers, marketers and real estate agents create images of high-rise
developments with the aim to sell residential ‘product’ in the context of the imagined ‘world
city’ that is being continually recreated as a liveable place. In many ways the new marketing
approaches have drawn heavily on the iconic images of cities like New York, with its skyline
that ‘became the symbolic blue print for the modern city and represented “the future”,
throughout the world’ (Wise, 2012: 99). These ‘creative, imaginative and persuasive views’,
22
across rivers and major urban structures, continue to be used to represent proposed urban
regeneration areas and to market new high-rise developments (Jansson & Lagerkvist, 2009:
26). Langlois (2012) has noted a general shift in advertising related to high-rise living in
recent decades and how it increasingly relies more on affective than information based
approaches, drawing on the domain of leisure for these purposes. Our analysis of three
Brisbane developments also reflects this emphasis in leisurescapes used to evoke a range of
affects that include enjoyment through socialising or relaxed solitude, intimacy with loved
ones, the excitement of city living and hedonic possibilities (bars, restaurants, theatres). In
this sense, marketing images must conjure liveable spaces that generate affects and mobilise
consumer desires for the leisure orientated lifestyle opportunities on offer. High-rise
dwellings thus constitute an emotional landscape connecting home and surroundings through
spatial relationships that produce pleasure, intimacy, autonomy and freedom to move. It is an
idealised neoliberal space of privileged freedom - safe, sophisticated urbanism that is free
from a socio-political context that might impinge on lifestyle choices (homelessness, poverty,
unemployment, violence) (Rojek, 2010). As Blackshaw (2010: 91) has argued this ‘dream
world of consumerism’ is produced through leisure practices that are highly individualised
constructions of selfhood where the social markers of class, gender, culture, age or sexuality
are obscured.
The images mobilised by property developers to promote high-rise developments do
not work in isolation, rather they work in relation to the multiple discourses and
visualisations of the city evoked through public, commercial and community agencies
(Langlois, 2012). Images are interpreted by consumers through multiple visualisations of
themselves, and family or friends, within and around these developments which align with
the aspirations of potential residents at certain times in their lives. The images encapsulate an
‘interiorised gaze’ that focuses upon the desire for new, stylish and sophisticated internal
23
spaces where individuals can retreat to a private world (imaged as home or village).
However, home is not simply conjured through interior domestic space but is produced in
relation to an ‘external gaze’ upon the city or surrounding social and public spaces. With
inner suburban developments (Circa Nundah and The Green) there is a focus on localised
social interactions and populated leisurescapes. The CBD development, Infinity, represents
home as an empty space of convenience that facilitates immediate access to the city and
entertainment opportunities. As Langlois (2012: 116) argued, the ‘exterior and interior
design, and project facilities structurally differentiate the high-rise development from other
dwelling types.’ Similarly, the lifestyle connoted through marketing images and text
differentiates the convenience and urban experiences of ‘living up’ from the labouring
demands of suburban home maintenance and time spent commuting to work (by lines
included ‘the next evolution, live, welcome’). Such meanings produce high-rise apartments as
‘liveable’ dwelling types that facilitate a sense of belonging through social interaction,
engagement in public culture, entertainment and consumption. In this way consumption is an
indissoluble aspect of the cultural production of an urban lifestyle (Cronin and Hetherington,
2008).
This construction of liveability stands in direct contrast to the inward-directed,
isolationist sensibility that has been associated with a suburban low-rise lifestyle with leisure
spaces in the back yard, streets and local parks or shopping malls (Serreli, 2009).
Langlois (2012) also identified a tendency for developers to portray people from a narrow set
of demographics which largely excluded representations of families and seniors and focused
on buyers and occupants such as singles and empty nesters. It was evident in our analysis that
the developers’ imagined target markets strongly influenced the imagery used in marketing
campaigns. Across all of our examples it was evident that images of consumers and high-rise
lifestyles were highly normalised and produced through a discourse of whiteness.
24
Furthermore, it was evident that the high-rise consumer was positioned as Anglo-celtic,
young or ‘empty nester’ heterosexual couples. The omission of diversity from such images
may, ironically, serve to limit the effectiveness of high-rise marketing within a multicultural
society with ‘niche’ higher income populations. In addition, the exclusive representation of
urban lifestyles to consumers who do purchase such homes serves to perpetuate a cultural
construction of high-rise living in which certain identities are invisible, especially related to
cultural and sexual difference, families with children, or the elderly. Hence, there exist
tensions between the multiple discourses that contribute to the urban imagination of Brisbane
as a highly liveable ‘New World City’. For developers, urban regeneration signifies an urban
lifestyle that is available for certain affluent, white heterosexual citizens while on the other
hand Brisbane City Council seeks to be inclusive, sustainable and cosmopolitan in its urban
planning for liveability (Fincher, 2004). It would seem that these different desires to create
opportunities to inhabit the ‘New World City’ work through different rationalities and power
relations. Developers privilege economic and lifestyle discourses as they reproduce globally
recognised images that signify urban lifestyle aspirations (comfortable homes, style,
convenience, individual freedom) in their desire for profit margins to the exclusion of social
diversity. The city council may regulate planning and economic gains through development,
however, they also grapple with the need to promote civic life and an inclusive notion of
citizenship within the compact city. Exclusive notions of urban identities, dwelling forms and
leisure practices, serve to undermine the cosmopolitan possibilities for emerging cities such
as Brisbane. These tensions are a prime site for further interrogation from a leisure studies
perspective on changing city spaces. As Watson and Scraton (1998:135) argued in their
feminist critique of the city, ‘Leisure spaces and places can be both sites for the production
and reproduction of structural relations and where counter and contradictory discourses are
developed’. They speak directly to the current challenges and opportunities that arise within
25
future scenarios of compact cities and high-density living, and highlight the centrality of
leisure, affect and persuasion in the construction of liveability for diverse residential
consumers.
Concluding Remarks
In this article we have examined how select advertising images and texts of new high-rise
developments construct particular notions of ‘liveability’ through the depiction of
leisurescapes that typify urban leisure lifestyles. These included the self-sufficiency of the
‘urban village’, the privatised yet socially connected comfort of the ‘landscaped retreat’ and
the hedonic gaze upon the ‘city as spectacle’. In the context of global capitalism and
advanced liberalism, such urban leisurescapes are deeply intertwined with the normalised
pleasures of consumer culture, the social display of identity in relation to home and
aspirational lifestyles. The city is invoked as a space of individualised freedom to move,
work, engage with others or retreat from when one owns an inner suburban apartment. There
are few leisure constraints apparent in this ‘liquid lifestyle’ (no congestion, pollution or
poverty) that speaks to the desire for autonomy and identity, high mobility, proximity to work
and multiple forms of social connection (Blackshaw, 2010; Rojek, 2010; Chaney, 1996).
Property marketing images are produced within a larger symbolic economy that is bound up
with the interests of global capital, tourism promotion and world city iconography. The
consumption of such images works through particular affects (pleasure, pride, privileged
comfort) that evoke idealised spaces and leisure practices that promise belonging, individual
fulfilment, fleeting pleasures, sensory experiences and sustained social connection. Other
affects (fear, disconnection, loneliness, frustration) are absent in representations of urban
leisure spaces and social interactions despite the literature that identifies the complex
26
geographies of fear and social inequality (England and Simon, 2010; Kearn, 2010; Scraton
and Watson, 1998)
In this way these representations of urban leisure can be understood to map out the emotional
landscapes that contribute to the imagined form and function of the ‘compact city’. As
Bavinton (2010) and Cronin (2006) have suggested, urban places are conjured through the
dominant discourses of property markets and images of consumerist culture, yet the
embodied interpretation produces complex affects. As researchers we engaged with these
texts through a range of affects that evoked an identification with pleasure and sociability, yet
also disengagement with the highly normalised identities of consumers and consumerist
leisure forms. We found the images to be both banal and also disturbing in terms of how they
reproduced normalised identities and erased social differences in the context of everyday
urban leisure practices. Despite its significance in our everyday experiences, embodied affect
is largely invisible to urban planners, including those within Brisbane City Council, who
work through planning processes informed by rational discourses about city needs, growth
forecasts and measures of liveability. Our analysis of consumer identities revealed tensions
between developer constructions of the liveable city and the Council’s vision for an inclusive,
vibrant city with diverse leisure practices and people. The marketing and production of urban
property as a desirable lifestyle commodity shapes how developers construct urban renewal
projects through highly individualised leisure practices (privatised, consumerist) and
normalised identities (white, middle class, heterosexual, without children).
While marketing images do not ‘determine’ how urban development will be interpreted they
do contribute to the production of dominant discourses about who is, and is not, entitled to
urban living and the value afforded to particular constructions of leisure (consumerist and
privatised). As Amin (2008:13) argues the iconography or urban space in ‘displays of
27
consumption and advertising, along with the routines of usage and public gathering, can be
read as a powerful symbolic and sensory code of public culture’. Ironically, the limited
communal leisure spaces offered within high rise complexes means that the marketing of
liveability relies heavily upon the relationship to public leisurescapes (parks, promenades,
walkways, galleries, sport stadia) and commercial provision (restaurants, bars, shopping
malls). With increasing urban density there is a key issue for developers and city planners
concerning the creation of ‘liveable’ public leisurescapes that offer different, collective and
non-commercial experiences for the diverse citizens they seek to attract to the new world
city.
28
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