The French Riviera as Elitist Space

Abstract

Within the last century the French Riviera (or Cote d'Azur) has become a region devoted to the values of pleasure, wealth and refined taste. Among the tourists, seasonal residents and permanent population who seek these qualities are large contingents of Parisians, retirees and foreigners. Facilities and scheduled events emphasize moneyed hedonism, and the cultural landscape reflects the search for aesthetic harmony. By design, egalitarian access to space is muted. The impress of elitist values over such an extensive territory owes much to the pervasive control of the French Riviera from Paris, evident in tourist flows, personal migration, land use decisions, vacation legislation, loans and subsidies, recent economic emphasis on research and development and imposition of standards of attractiveness. Elitist patterns will be accentuated rather than diminished in the decades ahead. Unstated cultural assumptions, deeply rooted in French culture, lie beneath much of the geographic character of the Riviera