Abstract
In this chapter we will take the positive aspects and the limits of contractual communities into consideration. We have tried to do this from a “neutral” and “non-partisan” point of view without taking sides beforehand. Our considerations here have led us to maintain that many of the recurrent criticisms of contractual communities are inconsistent and that only some are truly to the point.
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Notes
- 1.
There are some interesting results of the already quoted Zogby International (U.S.) national survey (2009). (This survey covers homeowners associations, condominiums, and housing cooperatives). For the item “Overall resident satisfaction”, 71% answered “positive”. To the question “How would you describe the return for what you pay in assessments?” 82% answered “Great” or “Good”. At the question “Do the rules in your community protect and enhance property values?” 70% answered yes. Source: Community Associations Institute (www.caionline.org).
- 2.
"To belong to a community is to act has a creator and co-owner of that community. What I consider mine I will build and nurture” (Block 2008, p. 12).
- 3.
- 4.
The data from a recent American Housing Survey (United States Census Bureau 2009) allows us to state that the housing units within gated communities (those with wall and special entry systems) are only about 5.5% of the total number of housing units. See the Appendix, Table 5, for more details.
- 5.
Reston Town Center, for example, attracts millions of visitors every year. In 1996, there were more than five million.
- 6.
See also Webster and Glasze (2006. p. 227): “Studies in the US… and elsewhere… have shown that is not only the elite who are moving into gated housing estates but that the trend is followed also by many households of the medium income range". And Ben-Joseph (2004, p. 132): “Although [they] have historically been the domain of the affluent…, private communities are spreading, world-wide, across diverse economic and social classes”.
- 7.
American Housing Surveys of 2001, 2005 and 2009 reveal that gated community associations include not only homeowner housing units but also rented units. For example, in 2009, 44% of the housing units included in gated communities were owned, and 56% were rented (United States Census 2009). This shows that not only the rich live in gated communities, because the richer classes tend to purchase their own houses. See the Appendix, Table 5, for more details.
- 8.
There is a certain kind of Marxist geography—followed more or less implicitly by many—that tends to make the existence of social-spatial inequalities (city-wide, region-wide, and country-wide) coincide with the existence of the capitalist system of production in the conviction that these two phenomena imply each other (Tabb and Sawers 1978; Harvey 1982; Smith 1984). There are rebuttals to this: no type of economy (capitalist or not) can develop in a spatially neutral and uniform way (Pahl 1975, 1979); therefore every kind of economy produces unequal development in any form or direction (Sayer 1995). We can very easily recall the existence of deep inequalities in old pre-capitalist urban and territorial areas as well in the socialist areas in the twentieth century (Matthews 1979; Cole 1981; Hague 1990).
- 9.
Needham (2006, pp. 41–43) observes that the traditional way of drawing the line between public spaces (those assumed to be open to all unconditionally) and private spaces (those open only to some and under certain conditions) has very little meaning because all city spaces are subject to the rules that the owners introduce (including public owners). As an alternative, Needham suggests that we distinguish among spaces on the basis of the differing “ownership regimes” to which they are subjected, where each of the owners in question (be they public or private) are authorized to introduce rules and conditions for entry. In other words, rather than speaking simply of the different holders (public or private) of land property rights, it seems more correct to speak of different ways of holding (and managing) such property rights.
- 10.
“It is interesting to note that many cities charge people to park in ‘public’ parking lots, whereas most shopping centers offer ‘free’ parking” (Foldvary 2009, p. 329).
- 11.
In the sense that Hayek (1982) gives to this expression, retrieving it from Adam Smith.
- 12.
See also Wilson-Doenges (2000).
- 13.
Today more than 1.75 million of Americans serve on the board of a residential community association. Tens of thousand serve as committee members (Community Association Institute: www.caionline.org).
- 14.
For example, in the aforementioned Reston and Columbia.
- 15.
Obviously, within the general framework of public rules that we want set up as a frame of guarantees and certainties that are “external” to such decisional procedures, as (normally) happens in relation, for example, to companies.
- 16.
The first large-scale, age-restricted, “active adult” community in the USA was Sun City (Arizona). See McHugh and Larson-Keagy (2005) for this type of community.
- 17.
For an ample and in-depth discussion of this crucial problem, see in particular Strahilevitz (2006).
- 18.
If a gated community is a community that is fenced in and close spatially, we can say that a gated life is a life where the potential for movement, communication, and interaction is reduced to the minimum. In the same way, a gated mind is the mind of people who peremptorily fight ideas, concepts of the good life, and styles of existence that are different than their own, just as they fight substantial innovations in that direction (Brunn 2006).
- 19.
This is recognised by Salcedo and Torres (2004) as they examined several residential situations in Latin America that are apparently “shuttered” and invited their readers to bring up for further discussion the by-now stock mainstream image of the phenomenon of closed communities. See also Alvarez-Rivadulla (2007, p. 47), who observe “the literature on gated communities tends to assume rather than empirically evaluate their impact on increasing segregation, ignoring contextual variations”.
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Brunetta, G., Moroni, S. (2012). Positive Aspects and Limits of Contractual Communities. In: Contractual Communities in the Self-Organising City. SpringerBriefs in Geography. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2859-2_3
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