A characteristic of popular culture is the development of social classes. A small elite group—consisting of persons of wealth, education, and expensive tastes—occupies the top economic position in popular cultures. The important geographical fact about such people is that because of their wealth, desire to be around similar people, and affluent lifestyles, they can and do create distinctive cultural landscapes, often over fairly large areas.

Daniel Gade, a cultural geographer, coined the term elitist space to describe such landscapes, using the French Riviera as an example (Figure 2.55). In that district of southern France, famous for its stunning natural beauty and idyllic climate, the French elite applied “refined taste to create an aesthetically pleasing cultural landscape” characterized by the preservation of old buildings and town cores, a sense of proportion, and respect for scale. Building codes and height restrictions, for instance, are strictly enforced. Land values, in response, have risen, making the Riviera ever more elitist, far removed from the folk culture and poverty that prevailed there before 1850. Farmers and fishers have almost disappeared from the region, though one need drive but a short distance, to Toulon, to find a working seaport. It seems, then, that the different social classes generated within popular culture become geographically segregated, each producing a distinctive cultural landscape (Figure 2.56).

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The United States, too, offers elitist landscapes. The economic and cultural changes unfolding in the western part of the country offer a vivid example. This phenomenon is popularly known as the “Old West” versus the “New West.” The Old West is the historic regional economy and corresponding cultural landscapes based on cattle ranching, mining, and logging. Most Old Westerners worked as wage laborers in these extractive industries. The New West refers to an amenity-based economy that features luxury second homes, outdoor recreational resorts, and international art and film festivals. The New Westerners are affluent professionals who earned their money in distant cities and are attracted to the natural beauty of the mountainous West. They are creating elite landscapes in spaces formerly dedicated to resource extraction.

Geographers John Harner and Bradley Benz conducted a study in southern Colorado that perfectly demonstrates how New West landscapes emerge. They focused on the area surrounding Durango, a former mining town that is now a tourist mecca featuring a steam-train, gourmet restaurants, ski shops, and boutique clothing stores. There, they measured the growth of ranchettes, 35- to 70-acre private parcels of land too small to be economically productive or legally subdivided further. These new landholdings are created for wealthy New Westerners who vacation in or retire to their new luxury homes in the wide-open spaces.

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Harner and Benz found that the number of ranchettes increased 67 percent from 1988 to 2008, which signals a huge influx of affluent migrants from the cities. Their study documented that the first ranchettes were constructed near the most desirable natural settings: streams and rivers, national parks and forests, and mountain vistas. The subdivision of large landholdings into ranchettes continued in a pattern of contiguous diffusion, gradually leveling out as the supply of amenity-rich spaces was exhausted.

Such fragmentation of landholdings and the corresponding creation of elite landscapes have been repeated across the western states many times over. Frequently, the process has led to clashes between newcomers and established residents. Geographers Peter Walker and Louise Fortmann studied the social conflicts emerging from the New West phenomenon in the foothills of California’s Sierra Nevada range. They determined that the most contentious political debates focused not on economic issues, but on cultural values expressed in landscape preferences. Affluent newcomers and established residents made different aesthetic judgments of landscape, and this was what drove efforts to gain political control over land-use decisions. The New West phenomenon highlights the relevance of cultural landscape to regional politics and economies.