Conceptualising Elite Neighbourhood Advantage: From Real Income to Real Capital

The literature on neighbourhood effects considers the significance of urban neighbourhoods as places that produce advantages or disadvantages to their inhabitants. In urban studies, the term ‘real income’ has been used to explain these neighbourhood effects, whereby costs and gains associated with distance or proximity to resources (such as jobs or services) and externalities (such as a polluting factory) are accounted for in measures of income distribution. For disadvantaged people, these real income effects can be substantial. However, in this paper I argue that for elites such effects are only marginal relative to other more essential sources of spatial and non-spatial advantages. Following this, using examples from three of Australia's most affluent neighbourhoods, I develop and explore the concept of ‘real capital’, that considers other more significant forms of spatial advantages associated with elite urban neighbourhoods.