Spaces of Affluence: The World's Largest Cruise Ship
This is a special guest contribution to :: repurposed :: by Matthew W. Wilson, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Geography, Ball State University.
Urban geographers have long examined the role of postmodern forms of capitalistic development in the city. Urban, utopian spaces like Disney's planned community, Celebration, as well as the (dystopian) phenomena that are Las Vegas and Los Angeles, demonstrate the quasi-randomness of city planning as it meets transnational corporate investment and an increasingly hybrid aesthetic of the hyper-bourgeoisie (Dear and Flusty 1998, Harvey 1989, Davis 1990; see also Deutsche 1996).
The Royal Caribbean's new Oasis of the Seas, at five-times the size of the Titanic and with a price of $1.5 billion, is perhaps a fitting figure of urban exceptionalism becoming the norm. The Oasis boasts seven 'neighborhoods,' accommodating a total of 6,300 passengers, including a re-imagining of Coney Island and Central Park.
"It's part cruise ship, part theme park. For many cruisers, it's the ship, not the Caribbean ports it visits, that will be the destination." [NPR]
These themed spaces allow consumers to experience multiple simulacra of urban-natural destinations (see also). For $34,000/week, passengers can stay in a two-story loft-like cabin. Broadway shows play just off 'the boardwalk,' while a zip-line, nine stories overhead, sends adventure-seeking passengers flying across 'Coney Island.' Entry-level tickets start at $1,200/week.
These spaces of affluence that increasingly extenuate the social-spatial segregation within cities are on one hand logical extensions of a capitalistic system that seeks to concentrate great wealth. These endeavors should continue to draw our attention to the incredible inequalities within our cities -- a kind of splintering urbanism (Graham and Martin 2001) -- as these tourist/recreational spaces proliferate.
However, might this form of critique also examine these re-presentations of urban space -- the 'Coney Island' and the 'Central Park' (as well as New York, NY or Paris in Las Vegas, etc.)? How do these representations enable certain (docile, commodified, captured) subjectivities? Where might the potential counter re-presentations enter in? What kinds of resistive practices dis-enable these spaces of affluence?
