Discretionary income follows infrastructure. That relationship has shaped cities, coastlines, and now — with considerably less ceremony — the interiors of smartphones held by people who may never set foot in the places that once monopolized certain kinds of entertainment.
Monte Carlo was not built for its residents. Baden-Baden’s casino district, the Kurhaus complex with its frescoed ceilings and weight of 19th-century aspiration, was constructed for visitors arriving by rail from Frankfurt and Paris, people for whom the journey itself was part of the social performance. The same logic animated Estoril in Portugal, which spent decades as a peculiar crossroads of wartime espionage and leisure tourism