The global urban elite: the sources of wealth and residential networks of the super-rich in 10 cities

We report on work using new data to offer profiles of the resident wealth elite of 10 key cities across the globe. We look at the wealth elites of Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Johannesburg, Lagos, London, Mexico City, New York, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco and Sydney – cities with among the greatest concentrations of the super-rich in each global region. Using machine learning techniques applied to commercial data on the super-rich we consider what this data tells us about each city elite’s: (i) sources of wealth by industrial sector, (ii) dynastic or ‘self-made’ bases of wealth, (iii) global distribution of the residences that they own and, finally, (iv) a typology of the character of each city’s wealth elite. We conclude with a brief discussion of the value of using machine learning to help us understand wealth elites in a context of growing unease around expansions in urban wealth inequalities.