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GATED COMMUNITIES.
Term Paper ID:24933
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Essay Subject:
Historical, political & socioeconomic contexts, reasons for, public vs. private space, crime, clsss polarization, elitism, communitarianism, individualism.... More...
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10 Pages / 2250 Words
17 sources, 26 Citations,
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Paper Abstract:
Historical, political & socioeconomic contexts, reasons for, public vs. private space, crime, clsss polarization, elitism, communitarianism, individualism.
Paper Introduction:
The purpose of this research is to examine the phenomenon of the rise in the number of gated communities for the upper middle class of the United States. The plan of the research will be to set forth the historical, social, and cultural context for the increase of gated-community living, and then to discuss how such communities manifest and/or respond to such issues as elitism, concern for personal safety, privacy, communitarianism, and isolation.
In the 1990s, an estimated 8-10 million middle-class and upper-middle-class Americans have become residents in so-called gated communities, at their extreme described as "walled medieval enclaves replete with gates and private security forces" (McCormick, 1998, p. 45). Equally, some 8.5 million poverty-class residents live in an estimated 3,000 ghetto or declining urban neigh
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. AmitaiEtzioni (Ed.). USCatholic, 63, 45-48. (1992). In such communities, identifying public and privatespace ratios is entirely unambiguous from one point of view and highlyparadoxical from another. New York: St. 843),gated communities are part of a larger scheme of "social developments thatundermine the building of social trust," which include a whole range ofmechanisms that may or may not protect but that undoubtedly foster classdivisions, such as elite-class flight from public schools, "slum clearanceprojects, which bulldoze close-knit neighborhoods; or gated communities andprivate athletic clubs, which pull the upper classes out of contact withmiddle classes." An underlying argument in favor of gated communities, which are by andlarge found in urban and suburban areas, is that even though a city as awhole is not safe, private homes can be. The German Ideology [excerpt]. (1992). Rights and the CommonGood. . 1-23. Bellah, et al., believe that a more general shared commitment to thepublic good, or elsewhere, a "renewal of commitment and community" (1985,p. . The plan of the research will be to set forth the historical,social, and cultural context for the increase of gated-community living,and then to discuss how such communities manifest and/or respond to suchissues as elitism, concern for personal safety, privacy, communitarianism,and isolation. Amitai Etzioni (Ed.). Are we zoning out sacred space? Archer cites Celebration City, near Orlando,Fla., location of Disney World, which is associated in popular imaginationwith small-town America of bygone years. Species of gated communities that straddle all three kinds includecommunities that are "actively imagineered on the basis of nostalgia andsocial amnesia as a means of solving postindustrial urban problems," saysArcher (1997, p. Martin's. K. Blakely and Snyder (1997) see the trends toward a decline of sharedspace as pernicious evidence of isolation of neighbors and a consequentloss of community sensibility. Meanwhile, some safety advocates in high-crime impoverished neighborhoods have called for or obtained barriers thatrestrict access to public streets. NewYork: St. (1997). Lasch says that that civil society as conceivedby traditional political liberalism, based on [Locke's] vision ofindividual reason aggregated as rational community, has declined "in aworld in which there are no values except those of the market" (Lasch,1995, p. Each attempt to restrict access to some admits it for others.Advocates of one form of gating often deplore other forms. So-called "gates toparadise" are communities in which residents share common lifestyles, suchas (affluent) retirement communities or those centered on such activitiesas golf or tennis. New York: St. . Lardner, G. Joseph Losco and Leonard Williams(Eds.). New York: St. (1997, November). can bepartly understood with reference to custom, practice, and beliefs regardingtheories of social structure in Western culture. 6 ). America is increasingly separated by race,income, and economic opportunity" (Blakely & Snyder, 1997, p. InWashington, D.C., "more than 1,5 individuals serving time for anythingfrom murders to misdemeanors have strolled out of halfway houses sinceJanuary 1 [1993]. (1995). AsGoldsmith points out in this regard, "suburbanites' antipathy toward citypeople and their neighborhoods long predates the drug violence that todaysuffocates so many people with fear, inner-city residents included"(Goldsmith, 1997, p. Blakely and Snyder focus on the details of theshape that gated communities have assumed in the 199 s. Hobbes, Thomas. In the 199 s, an estimated 8-1 million middle-class and upper-middle-class Americans have become residents in so-called gated communities, attheir extreme described as "walled medieval enclaves replete with gates andprivate security forces" (McCormick, 1998, p. References Archer, K. Etzioni cites such challenges to traditional conceptions of civilsociety as the "cult" of criminal rights following the Miranda decision, oralternatively, what some would call reactionary attempts to abolish Mirandaand constitutional guarantees for the accused altogether (1995, p. Upper-middle and middle-class gatedcommunities create "public" spaces (e.g., golf courses, pools) inside thegates that nevertheless are not truly public (i.e., to be sharedunrestricted with lower classes). It is located in a "private community, with no intention ofincorporating as a municipality" (Stark, 1998, p. gated communities. S. Amitai Etzioni (Ed.). 4). Americans today are in the midst of a vast and largely unrecognized transformation: the radical redefinition at the grassroots level of the boundary between the public and the private realms. Martin's Press. Rights and the Common Good. To be an egalitarian might dispose you to insist on gates for public streets . They areless dependent on lower classes to provide them with services, thus lesslikely to come in contact with lower classes (Van Kempen & Marcuse, 1997).It is also important to note that, in the current period, the tendencytoward gated communities has not been confined to elites, but has includedof subelites whose concerns center on the redefinition of private andpublic spaces. Political Theory:Classic Writings, Contemporary Views. Even community involvement can become territorial, self-interested,and isolating, or as they term it, utilitarian individualism. Political Theory: ClassicWritings, Contemporary Views. America, the gated? (1995). 45). 225-235. 59-66. . PoliticalTheory: Classic Writings, Contemporary Views. And as unanticipatedconsequences set in, the credibility of accommodative social strategiesbecame problematic. Communitarian social critique suggests that people enjoy too manyrights but have very few responsibilities. . Getting serious about crime.The Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 6-7. Bellah, R. However, as Kerber suggests (1997, p. But this focus on self, orexpressive individualism, often ignores social links between self andothers. Social theories of Hobbes,Locke, and Marx are hardly in agreement about how society ought to bestructured. (1998, February). 1). Leviathan [excerpt]. Such a formulation explains, too, why a gated-communityadvocate would also insist on not being denied access to ungatedneighborhoods located on public streets, and why residents of ungatedneighborhoods could advocate late-night anti-drug street barriers yet alsodeplore the existence of gated communities. Nor are these theories of social structure the only onesinforming Western discourse. He explains it with reference toindividuals who expect trial by jury but also evade jury duty (Etzioni,1995, p. . (1993, November 15-21). They use examples of the life experiences of white middleclass persons to show how being absorbed in their own concerns hasalienated them from a sense of membership in the wider community. 3 5). New York: St. . On the public streets, however, the egalitarians favor gates and the more libertarian-minded oppose them. 228-9). The gated community, therefore, ostensibly accomplishedin private space what neither accommodation nor positive anti-loitering lawcould accomplish in shared space. (1992). American Behavioral Scientist, 41, 285-298. (1998, Winter). 293); property is one among many objects of theperpetual "state of war" that would exist were the state not present toprevent wholesale slaughter (Hobbes, 1992, p. Stark, A. Wilson Quarterly, 22, 58-79. Gated communities are only the most obvious (and easily attacked) example of this change. 243-5 . To counter unstoppable market values, liberals "turned to thestate." But as state programs failed, owing partly to market forces, so didconfidence in the state, and by extension, in the integrity of civilsociety. New York: St. Joseph Losco and Leonard Williams (Eds.). Meanwhile, the gulf between competing conceptualizations ofthe highest and best use private and public space seems unbreachable. But what these theories share is a focus onrelationships between individual and the state, with the state functioning,as needed, as a mediator of relationship patterns between individuals.Power, state, and property predominate as issues, whether, as in the caseof Locke, property is the principal foundation of a rational and just civilsociety (Locke, 1992, p. L.A. J., & Snyder, M. 9). McCormick, P. 279-98. Blakely, E. Van Kempen, R., & Marcuse, P. 14). Goldsmith, W. 335). I could be me. Forits part, the justice system seems powerless to attack the crime problem.Popular-press reports suggest that younger criminals, many of them gangmembers, have an attitude of contempt for the society in general. Siegel, F. New York: St. The Metropolis and globalization: Thedialectics of racial discrimination, deregulation, and urban form. Libertarians will defend gates in private communities but revile them on public streets (Stark, 1998, pp. The limits to the imagineered city:Sociospatial polarization in Orlando. Second treatise of government [excerpt]. Deepinvolvement in political action causes, in providing for family needs, inwork, or some version of psychotherapy emphasizes "fixing" how oneexperiences the world or feels about oneself. To be sure, traditional loitering laws had oftenbeen a proxy for racial segregation. G. Butas Stark points out, Celebration's town hall is not really a publicbuilding. The fact is that physical isolation, whether in the guiseof individualism or security, implies an isolation from "difference,"whether racial, economic, or ethnic, and whether physical, spiritual, orphilosophical. Then the nextminute I turn into Satan" (Knight, 1993, p. The point is thatin Western conceptions of civil communities, the individual's social roleis inevitably defined as a greater or lesser claim on the benefits,resources, and protections of public institutions and greater or lesserneed to compete for those benefits, resources, and protection. The opposite view is that gatedneighborhoods are an exercise in elitist separation from lower classes,partly because wealth in an era of globalization gives elites a life withscope larger than (or different from) their immediate community. Thus BIDadvocates assert that residential gated communities restrict access whileBID improvements enable increased access to public spaces (Stark, 1998).Gated-community advocates, meanwhile, applaud privatizing street and patrolservices inside the privately owned "public" spaces of the community whilerejecting BID projects or anti-gang neighborhood barriers that alter accessto public roadways and spaces. One jailed black youth told The Washington Post that getting involvedin crime means "trying to get a name . Habits of the heart: individualism and commitment in American life.New York: Harper & Row, Publishers/Perennial Library. The result has been a paradox and a blur ofwhere controversy over gated areas and public-private access lies: The older controversy typically pits egalitarian gate critics against freedom-loving gaters, who cite their rights to do whatever they want with their own private property. Bellah, et al. 246). AmericanBehavioral Scientist, 41, 299-31 . Inthe communitarian view, such environments would be interpreted asinstrumental means of arriving at controlled constructions of communityrather than at community per se. . Economic Geography, 73, 322-336. Journal ofAmerican History, 84, 833-854. However, "need for a modicum of order. 328). But it can just as easily impel you to attack the gates erected by private communities . . Whether at the affluent or impoverished end of the spectrum,individuals and groups within the scope of these theories have beentraditionally meant to define themselves in society mainly by reason oftheir connection to social structures and institutions. Rights and the Common Good.Amitai Etzioni (Ed.). The meanings of citizenship. Equally, some 8.5million poverty-class residents live in an estimated 3, ghetto ordeclining urban neighborhoods, up from about 1,2 such neighborhoods inthe 198 s. (1995). 61). Archer sees evidence that the ideaof Celebration City is influencing similar developments around Orlando. N., Madsen, R., Sullivan, W. A perceivedincrease in suburban crime in Los Angeles, particularly in the wake of theso-called Rodney King verdict riot in 1992, led to widespread applicationsfor gated communities in both upper-class and middle-class areas of thecity area (NPR, 1995, p. Archer characterizesCelebration as a theme park without the park, a "controlled [hence false]urban reality": [T]he key to such a community is to envelop residents in an environment seamless enough to transform their perception of reality. The polarization of affluence and poverty in the U. Such a new reality can only be created privately, because if the public is involved it will (1) promulgate competing visions of reality, thereby assuring dissent and disrupting the process of creating new realities; (2) demand participation in the future plans for such realities, thereby tying the hands of the original developers; and (3) perhaps most importantly, become cognizant of the management and the imagineered nature of this reality (Archer, 1997, p. However, as Etzioni suggests, instilling communitarian values--even those that seem unobjectionable aspects of common sense--comes upagainst reluctance to relinquish rights or property and reluctance toacknowledge claims of others against them. Martin's Press. W. In so-called business improvementdistricts (BIDs), merchants pay privately for neighborhood improvementssuch as graffiti or derelict removal in exchange for favorable taxtreatment. TheWashington Post National Weekly Edition, 8-9. 72-3). Clogged courts, slow justice. 277) should be the goal of individuals and society alike. 233-51. A new spatial order incities? Thereseems little likelihood of resolving tension between (1) a communitarianview calling for renewal of community and culture for the middle class andentailing a sense of obligation toward wider norms of universalcitizenship, and (2) a view from the same middle class that its unsafeexperience of the wider community argues against obligations to it. The purpose of this research is to examine the phenomenon of the risein the number of gated communities for the upper middle class of the UnitedStates. Kerber, L. This may be because the shape that gatedcommunities assume is not uniform. Undoubtedly, suburban (white) flight fromurban centers is one aspect of this, but it is not the only one. But inrecent years, such assumptions about the structure of civil society havebeen called into question. 11). National Public Radio. The gated community as a concept and asphysical reality is against such an idea: "For those inside the gates, lifemay be a little more comfortable. 472). Etzioni, A. 61-2).The image of social polarization is strong, but Stark says that thepractical effect of gated communities has been to blur where public andprivate spaces are divided. Prestige communities (not mutually exclusive oflifestyle communities) may be made up of neighbors and houses of thegreatest affluence. Martin's Press. . 465-74. (1997, November). Gatedcommunities are consistent with that view and experience of the world. Lasch, C. The response of populations feeling threatened by society'sunpredictability has been to seek protection and privacy. (1997, July). became entangled with the need to redress racial wrongs," and"reformers straining to be 'hip' often trivialized the collateralconsequences of the behavior [e.g., prostitution] they wanteddecriminalized" (Siegel, 1995, pp. Knight, A. Thus people behave as if theirpersonal morality were irrelevant to the quality of shared socialexperience, and as if they were entitled to benefit from a social and legalpolitical environment in which personal morality governed that experiencebut which also acknowledged all formally constituted rights. One element ofcommunitarianism is that rights entail responsibility as a matter of socialprinciple. . The kinds of gated communities that cause the mostcontroversy are those that function as security zones, or "enclaves offear," where the impulse against sharing space is strongest. Locke, J. Martin's Press. Marx, K. Communitarianism or populism? Etzioni, acommunitarian proponent, says that the communitarian perspective that"recognizes both individual human dignity and the social dimension of humanexistence" while urging development of "skills of self-government as wellas the habit of governing ourselves, and learn[ing] to serve others--notjust self" (Etzioni, 1995, p. In fact,they are suspicious of many of the traditional mechanisms that otherwiseindividualistic Americans have used to engage in community efforts. (1993, November 29-December 5). Introduction. Communitarian social critique has developed as a strand of thoughtroughly parallel in time to emergence of gated communities. (1985), indirectly suggest the real source of suchdouble thinking in their discussion of the cult of individualism, whichthey think has had bad effects on social and cultural development inAmerican life. The loss of public space. Public-private boundaries are also being redrawn in tens of thousands of ungated communities--planned developments, condominiums, cooperatives--managed by various kinds of private governments grouped under the rubric "homeowners' associations" (Stark, 1998, pp. Siegel traces this viewof public-space tyranny to a variety of accommodative social strategies formarginalized populations. M., Swidler, A., & Tipton, S. Rights and theCommon Good. Martin's Press, 1995. For others, however, gated communitiessymbolize a larger social pattern of social segmentation designed todisassociate and exclude. (1995). (1997, December). 238); or, as in the case ofMarx, property is analyzed as the reason that stable civil society is bothirrational and unjust (Marx, 1992, p. Washington, D.C.: Brookings InstitutionPress. Martin's P. Inevitably,the protected, insular enclave truncates the opportunity to arrive atshared values, including, one could suggest, values that argue the need forcivil society that can be defined in keeping with the thought of Hobbes,Locke, and Marx. Some commentators suggest that the controversy has been misconceivedaltogether and stems from the loss of historically public space, not somuch to elite restrictions against (say) the homeless and criminals as tothe tyranny of those (criminals, drug pushers, beggars) whose refusal toassent to public civility restricts access of those not wishing to accostor be accosted to parks and similar public spaces. . Joseph Losco and LeonardWilliams (Eds.). M.(1985). About 5 of them are still at large" (Lardner, 1993, p.6). Fortress America: gatedcommunities in the United States. Even though the physical and social construction of gated communitiesmay be shaped differently, the ultimate image is of polarization, not blur.As a practical matter, this means restricting racial and class access towhat would otherwise be public space (streets, parks, and so on) whilefailing to address social injustices that might be the root cause of"tension in the city between the private and public realm" (NPR, 1995, p.25 ).
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