Gated Communities

International Perspectives

Rowland Atkinson,Sarah Blandy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781317998273
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

This informative volume gathers contemporary accounts of the growth, influences on, and impacts of so-called gated communities, developments with walls, gates, guards and other forms of surveillance.

While gated communities have become a common feature of the urban landscape in South Africa, Latin and North America, it is also clear that there is now significant interest in gated living in the European and East Asian urban context. The chapters in this book investigate issues and communities such as:

• gated communities in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires, Argentina
• planning responses to gated communities in Canada
• who segregates whom? The analysis of a gated community in Mendoza, Argentina
• sprawl and social segregation in southern California.

These illustrative chapters enable the reader to understand more about the social and economic forces that have lead to gating, the ways in which gated communities are managed, and their wider effects on both residents and those living outside the gates.

This book was previously published as a special issue of the journal Housing Studies.

Constructing The Pomerium in Las Vegas: A Case Study of Emerging Trends in American Gated Communities

EVAN MCKENZIE

Political Science Department, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA

(Received October 2003; revised March 2004)

KEY WORDS: Gated community, homeowners association, privatization, special district

Introduction

Privately governed residential enclaves, known as common interest housing developments (CIDs), many of them gated and walled, are the predominant form of new housing in America’s fastest growing cities and suburbs. Over the last 25 years, this massive privatisation of local government functions has changed the appearance and organisational structure of American urban areas. This trend is not a passing fashion but an institutional transformation reflecting the ideological shift toward privatism characteristic of the neoliberal consensus. Specifically, the CID revolution is driven by three main forces. Developers pursue higher density in order to maintain profits despite rising land costs. Local governments seek growth and increased tax revenues with minimal public expenditure. Many middle and upper-class home buyers, fearful of crime and disenchanted with government, are in search of a privatised utopia offering security, a homogeneous population, and managerial private government.

This transformation resembles the construction of a physical and institutional pomerium, or sanctified wall, around the affluent portions of an increasingly divided society. Nowhere in the US is this transformation more visible than in Las Vegas, Nevada, the fastest growing city in the nation, and one that exemplifies the national and global trend toward placing tourism at the centre of the urban economy and reshaping the spatial, social and political order accordingly. Las Vegas area local governments require developers to construct virtually all new housing in CIDs, and gated security developments are popular. So popular, in fact, that non-CID neighbourhoods come under pressure to emulate CIDs. One such neighbourhood, Bonanza Village, was literally walled in by the City of Las Vegas, over the protest of many of its residents, in order to make the old neighbourhood resemble contemporary gated communities and thus link it with downtown redevelopment.

This paper seeks to outline the trends that are emerging in the production and practices of these privately governed gated communities.

Production: Residential Private Government and Gated Communities

Privately governed residential enclaves, known as common interest housing developments (CIDs), are the predominant form of new housing in America’s fastest growing cities and suburbs. About one-fifth of them are gated and walled (Blakely & Snyder, 1997, p. 180, n.1). Over the last 25 years this massive privatisation of local government functions, consisting of some 250 000 housing developments containing about 20 million housing units and 50 million people, has changed the appearance and organisational structure of American urban areas (Community Associations Institute, 2004).

Common interest housing includes planned developments of single-family homes, townhouses, and condominiums. These developments involve a form of ownership in which home buyers purchase both an individual interest in a particular unit and another interest, consisting often of streets, recreation centres, golf courses and other facilities, which they own in common with all residents in the development. They buy their property subject to voluminous sets of deed restrictions, rules and regulations, under which all owners agree to make monthly payments to a homeowner association, a private government into which all residents are enlisted at the moment of purchase. The association is run by the residents, supported by cadres of lawyers and other professionals, and it enforces the deed restrictions against all residents and manages the use of property and other aspects of life in the development. Increasingly, CID housing involves homeowner association-administered security measures, which typically include walls and gates, and may involve hiring guards and even private police forces.

There is considerable disagreement over the causes and effects of this phenomenon. It has been argued that the CID revolution is driven by the motivations of developers and local governments on the supply side, and consumers on the demand side, with the supply side interests predominating over the demand side (McKenzie, 1998a).

Developers have found that CIDs help them pursue higher density in order to maintain profits despite rising land costs. They can put more people on less land, and also provide amenities to buyers, by creating common ownership of parks, swimming pools and so forth. Local governments seek growth and increased tax revenues with minimal public expenditure. CIDs privatise what would otherwise be government responsibilities and place these burdens in the hands of homeowner associations, whose members pay for them through monthly assessments. These associations arrange for rubbish collection, plough snow in the winter and move leaves in the fall, repair and light streets, run parks and do many other things that government would otherwise have to do in order to enjoy the increased tax revenues from new development. Thus cities can acquire new property taxpayers without having to extend to them the full panoply of municipal services.

But the demand for such a lifestyle cannot be ignored. Many middle and upper-class home buyers, fearful of crime and disenchanted with government, are in search of a privatised utopia offering security, a homogeneous population, and small-scale managerial private government that enforces high standards of property maintenance. For many people, the gated community is especially attractive, as it adds fortification to all the other attributes of CID living.

I have argued that the rise of residential private government facilitates the emergence of a two-tier society in which the ‘haves’ are increasingly separated—spatially, institutionally, socially and economically—from those of lesser means. I call this realm ‘privatopia’ because it represents the pursuit of utopian aspirations through privatisation of public life. Within privatopia the terms and conditions of life are at odds with the norms and expectations of liberal democracy. Residential private governments, known generically as ‘homeowner associations’, are not restricted by conventional notions of civil liberties and due process of law, and their activities are supported by a powerful cadre of professionals, including lawyers, property managers, accountants and others.

Yet, many observers see the situation quite differently. Some argue that the CID revolution is merely a manifestation of consumer sovereignty, representing the collective preferences of millions of home buyers. This demand side logic reaches its greatest extent with the libertarian justification of homeowner associations as private protective associations, a view anticipated in Robert Nozick’s major work, Anarchy, State, and Utopia. By this logic, discussion of the social effects of these millions of individual choices is largely irrelevant, because principles of individual liberty that govern the choices justify the end result. The related caveat emptor argument is generally persuasive to American courts, reflecting the view that each individual owner should be bound by the terms of her contract, and that the state should not interfere to remake that agreement. This argument has been considered elsewhere (McKenzie, 1998b), that the premises for the caveat emptor perspective often do not apply, because in many cases the contracts that create homeowner associations are in reality adhesion contracts, the terms of which are incomprehensible to the average buyer and non-negotiable in any event. However, it seems that the social and political consequences of private residential government are too significant to be left to individual market choices.

The homeowner association is not a passing fashion but an important institution, reflecting the ideological shift toward privatism that is characteristic of the neo-liberal consensus. Institutions insinuate themselves into people’s lives, shaping the way they think and the choices they make. Mandatory membership homeowner associations induce people to identify with a small neighbourhood of people with similar social and economic characteristics, either by co-operating with the association or by opposing it. This is a kind of localised identity formation that otherwise might not happen. Some scholars, particularly those of communitarian leanings, like to think of this process as social capital formation, or as an embodiment of the ‘defensible space’ theory, and some think it is a voluntary community. The interpretation here is that typically this institution gathers a group of affluent people together and forces them to think of themselves in relationship to the institution and the neighbourhood it represents. It also locks them together economically to do things that otherwise local government would do. Although developers started this institution, in the last decade state and local governments have taken the lead in promoting the spread of CID housing.

What is the relationship of gated communities to this privatisation process and the institution that is at its core? Taken together, these things—homeowner associations, privatisation and gated communities—resemble the construction of a pomerium. The pomerium is an ancient concept dating to pre-Roman times and used in the demarcation of Rome itself. The pomerium was not necessarily a real wall, although it had physical markers. It was a symbolic, sanctified boundary that separated civilisation from barbarism, order from chaos and civil peace from anarchy. The pomerium was, in essence, an imaginary line drawn around the spiritual city. Instead of surrounding an entire city, today’s emerging pomerium demarcates the protected islands of walled and gated private communities.

Practices: Homeowner Associations, Security Walls, and Development Trends in Las Vegas

Las Vegas is the fastest growing city, in the fastest growing county, in the fastest growing state in the USA. The spread of CID housing as the dominant form of new residential development is especially dramatic in the Las Vegas area. Nearly all new construction is in planned residential subdivisions with homeowner association private governments. In order to maintain low taxes with an astronomical growth rate, the City of Las Vegas and Clark County promote CID housing, which offers those who can afford it a range of privatised services, and minimises demands on local government. As Gottdeiner observes:

While master-planned communities have been criticized as being insular for isolating themselves from the surrounding community, that is exactly what many homebuyers want … In short, they seek services and protection they can no longer expect from municipal government. Thus, while some may criticize them as sterile, master-planned communities continue to be a great success in the Las Vegas region, where developers continue to build and sell thousands of homes per year. (Gottdeiner et al., 1999, p. 153)

While there is clearly a demand for such locations, their proliferation is not just the byproduct of interaction between buyers and sellers. The City of Las Vegas virtually mandates that new development be done with homeowner associations. This is a two-step process. First, the city’s Zoning Code and Development Code require that all new housing within the planned development zone contain certain features, including a landscaping plan, open spaces, and often security walls. Then, elsewhere in these codes, the city requires that if such features are included—which they must be—then there must be a homeowner association to maintain them. For example, in the following excerpt from Title 18 of the Las Vegas Zoning Code Section 18.12.5600, the word ‘shall’ was recently substituted for the word ‘may’ to provide as follows:

18.12.5600 Landscaping Plan. A landscaping plan shall be provided by the subdivider as an integral part of subdivision design. Such a plan shall be prepared and submitted with each final map application addressing the landscape design of the subdivision with respect to such features as wall or fence design; land forms or berms; rocks and boulders; trees and plant materials; sculpture, art, paving materials, street furniture; and subdivision entrance statement; common area landscaping and other open space areas … Where common lots are shown for landscaping, the applicant shall cause the creation of a homeowners association for purposes of owning the common lot and maintaining the landscaping.

The code further provides that “All walls, setback areas and landscaping created to accommodate these regulations shall be located on private property. If in common ownership, the property shall be owned and maintained by a Homeowner’s Association” (Las Vegas Zoning Code, Section 18.12.570, subsection C). And Chapter 19 of the Zoning Code requires that in Residential Planned Development Districts, “All development with 12 or more dwelling units shall provide 15 per cent useable open space for passive and active recreational uses”.

The city’s Urban Design Guidelines and Standards are similar, stating: “All required landscaping shall be properly maintained, based on standard landscaping practices, by the property owner(s) and/or supported by a perpetual Homeowner’s Association budget, or a reasonable alternative approved by the City”. According to a representative of the Southern Nevada Builders’ Association, no such alternative has been approved to date. The same Guidelines and Standards provide that “Developers may provide and plant street medians on public and private streets as long as they are supported by a perpetual Homeowner’s Association”. Elsewhere, common open spaces, which must be HOA controlled are required: “Private and common open spaces are to be provided in Residential Planned Development Districts and in multifamily residential developments”.

Title 19 of the city Zoning Code provides for HOA controlled private streets and gated entrances:

Subdivisions developed with private streets must have a mandatory property owners’ association which includes all property served by private streets. The association shall own and be responsible for the maintenance of private streets and appurtenances … The entrances to all private streets must be marked with a sign stating that it is a private street. Guard houses, access control gates and cross arms may be constructed. (Chapter 19A. 04)

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman was forced to respond to these “complaints that ordinances on the books since 1997 mandate all new subdivisions be structured as homeowner associations”, saying to angry builders and owners only that, “We can see if we can make some adjustments” (CityLife, 2000). But such adjustments are neither forthcoming nor probable. The City of Las Vegas not only requires HOAs in new development, but also encourages existing neighbourhoods that do not have homeowner associations to form them. In 1998, the Las Vegas City Council unanimously approved a measure directing city staff to work with neighbourhood ‘community associations’ in “crafting plans to guide development” in the city (Zapler, 1998) Through the Neighbourhood Services Department, the city has induced over 150 different neighbourhood associations to form (Gottdeiner et al., 1999, p. 182).

There is one other major ingredient driving the current political economy of Las Vegas, and that is the competition between the City of Las Vegas and Clark County for tourist dollars. Downtown Las Vegas, known as ‘Glitter Gulch’, was the home of the original Las Vegas casinos. But over the last 20 years, these casinos have been eclipsed by the construction of giant, spectacular ‘mega-casinos’ on Las Vegas Boulevard, or ‘The Strip’, outside the city limits. These mega-casinos are close to downtown and closer to the major airport, but are in Clark County. They drain tourist revenue from the city, creating a uniquely intense version of the city-suburb competition for business that is typical of most American metro areas. During the 1990s, the City of Las Vegas fought back against the mega-casinos with a massive downtown redevelopment effort. Over half a billion dollars in development funds are being channelled through the Center City Development Corporation (CCDC), a non-profit corporation that is a ‘private-public partnership’ modelled after the entity used to redevelop downtown San Diego, California.

As in other downtown redevelopment efforts, the poor stand in the path of the city’s economic resurgence in its competition with the county. The city recently forced one of the area’s largest homeless shelters out of Las Vegas, denying it title to 10 acres of land it had been operating on, just north of downtown. As the Mayor and a city council member said:

“I don’t want to see Las Vegas become the only center for the homeless in this valley,” Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• CONTENTS
• Introduction: International Perspectives on The New Enclavism and the Rise of Gated Communities
• 1 Constructing the Pomerium in Las Vegas: A Case Study of Emerging Trends in American Gated Communities
• 2 Homeowners Associations, Collective Action and the Costs of Private Governance
• 3 Some Reflections on the Economic and Political Organisation of Private Neighbourhoods
• 4 Rediscovering the ‘Gate’ Under Market Transition: From Work-unit Compounds to Commodity Housing Enclaves
• 5 Gated Communities in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires, Argentina: A Challenge for Town Planning
• 6 Planning Responses to Gated Communities in Canada
• 7 Gated Communities: (Ne)Gating Community Development?
• 8 Who Segregates Whom? The Analysis of a Gated Community in Mendoza, Argentina
• 9 Gated Communities: Sprawl and Social Segregation in Southern California
• 10 Gated Communities as Club Goods: Segregation or Social Cohesion?
• Index