urban change questions

These questions are posed in the context of sustainable urban development, but I think them both interesting and relevant to fictional concerns (perhaps especially those of urban fantasy and fiction more generally?):

“Ultimately,” write, “the green city will reflect a rather different future for work. On this topic there are some very large questions: can a future of cities competing against one another in world markets be reconciled with a benign future for the environment? What are the limits of competition and how can they be enforced? Does economic growth itself have limits? How can growth be steered into environmentally benign forms of production? What forms of governance are required to regulate world markets in order to guarantee social security and environmental conservation? How do culture, place and climate influence work patterns, and consequently the physical accommodation of work?” (p.132)

Ref: Nicholas Low, Brendan Gleeson, Ray Green and Darko Radovic (2005) The Green city: Sustainable homes, sustainable suburbs. Routledge, Abingdon and New York; and UNSW Press, Sydney

gated communities as barometers

According to Atkinson & Blandy:

“Gated communities represent a new or at least relatively novel form of housing development in the European context and their number is increasing. With growing consumer and media interest the US and South African models of such development may form templates for understanding this direction in preferences, primarily directed by fear, privacy and predictability. What is less clear is why such development is growing in societies characterised by lower prevailing crime rates and higher levels of social cohesion. In this sense perhaps gated communities might be seen as barometers indicating the future shape and scale of social forces linked to social fear and aspirations toward ex-territoriality (Bauman, 2000). In this sense the significance of gated communities lies less in their number and more in what they say about a wider bundle of social pressures now directing where and how people live.” (p.184)

“The club good of security and neighbourhood services represented by gated communities resemble new medieval city-states wherein residents pay dues and are protected, literally as their ‘citizens’. With the growth of these gated mini-states, the argument has been that gated residents should not have to pay twice for services they already receive. This may ultimately have the effect that entitlements to vital aspects of citizenship, such as security, welfare and environmental services, become based on which neighbourhood one lives in.” (p.185)

Ref: (emphases in blue bold, mine) Rowland Atkinson & Sarah Blandy (2005): Introduction: International Perspectives on The New Enclavism and the Rise of Gated Communities, Housing Studies, 20:2, 177-186

Gated communities separate the home environment from the city

Jill L. Grant explains: “Gated communities seek to create safe and quiet private realms that separate the home environment from the city…. In Canada, gated communities have private streets that limit connections to public streets, restrict parking, and often set very low speed limits. Canadian enclaves also usually lack such urban infrastructure as sidewalks. Some larger gated projects in the United States have commercial centers and schools within them: They may share the features of small towns and even seek municipal incorporation (McKenzie 1994; Tessler and Reyes 1999). Design standards are high and often allow a limited palate of colors and forms. The developments presume that residents will own and operate cars. Qualification requirements and narrow pricing ranges ensure a homogeneous population in terms of class, interests (such as golf), and age.” (p.487)

“Private governance proves endemic in new residential developments in the United States (McKenzie 1994, 2005) and appears to be increasingly common in Canada as well. The contemporary city, as Christopherson (1994) suggests, is based on control and separation, with the neighborhood defined as a protected private haven in a potentially dangerous environment. Privatization offers a measure of control that may appeal to nervous residents. In part, this accounts for the lure of both New Urbanist communities
and gated enclaves.” (p.492)

“In a sense we can see gated and New Urbanist developments as alternative responses to the perceived crises of contemporary living. Consumers seeking new homes engage in a search not only for somewhere to live, but also for a neighborhood where they might find civility, community, identity, and character. Developers of enclaves and traditional communities try to sell these commodities.
Concerns about civility characterize a society in which murder, violence, rape, and other crimes flood the headlines in the daily news media and television shows about the police, the court system, and forensic pathology top the ratings. Fears about crime and “bad behavior” motivate the desire to find urban forms that might control behavior. The promise that good urban form can recreate the safe and comfortable town or village of days gone by, where people knew each other and felt secure, proves extremely alluring (Grant 2005a). New Urbanism seeks to tame behavior by making visitors feel that they might be observed at any time and by employing devices such as front porches and community retail to create interaction points for residents. Reconstituting the form of the traditional town or village aims to resocialize urban residents to appropriate behavior.” (p.492)

“The search for community has deep roots in North America (Talen 2000). A perceived loss of connection with others and the hope of confronting difference in ways that avoid conflict contribute to the search for integrated social environments.” (p.493)

“In a context of increasing social polarization and global urbanization, enclaves create space for inclusive communities of like-minded souls. Beneath the veneer of a tolerant society that celebrates diversity may lurk a disdain for difference that drives gated development.” (p.496)

Ref: Jill L. Grant (2007): Two sides of a coin? New urbanism and gated communities, Housing Policy Debate, 18:3, 481-501

Gated communities – Atkinson and Blandy

Introducing a volume of papers on gated communities, Rowland Atkinson & Sarah Blandy explain that:

“Gated communities (hereafter GCs) have been defined in a number of ways. These definitions tend to cluster around housing development that restricts public access, usually through the use of gates, booms, walls and fences. These residential areas may also employ security staff or CCTV systems to monitor access. In addition, GCs may include a variety of services such as shops or leisure facilities. The growth of such private spaces has provoked passionate discussion about why, where and how these developments have arisen. This volume presents an opportunity to gather together contemporary and diverse views on what is at least commonly agreed to be a radical urban form.
The apparently ‘unique’ characteristics of GCs present immediate problems for an accurate definition. Should we include flats with door entry systems, tower blocks with concierge schemes or partially walled housing estates, even detached houses with their own gates? Among this confusion we suggest that the central feature of GCs is the social and legal frameworks which form the constitutional conditions under which residents subscribe to access and occupation of these developments, in combination with the physical features which make them so conspicuous.

Living in a gated community means signing up to a legal framework which allows the extraction of monies to help pay for maintenance of common-buildings, common services, such as rubbish collection, and other revenue costs such as paying staff to clean or secure the neighbourhood. However, such legal frameworks can also be found in many thousands of non-gated homeowner associations in the US, and indeed in blocks of leasehold flats in England. This leads us back to the important physical aspects of these developments. Where a combination is found of these socio-legal agreements and a physical structure which includes gates and walls enclosing space otherwise expected to be publicly accessible, we can finally achieve some clarity of definition. Gated communities may [-p.178] therefore be defined as walled or fenced housing developments, to which public access is restricted, characterised by legal agreements which tie the residents to a common code of conduct and (usually) collective responsibility for management.” (pp.177-178) [although Atkinson and Blandy do note further down that many residents are not well-read on the nature of these agreeements (p.183)]

Atkinson & Blandy continue: “While this definition may be useful it is often argued that gated communities express more than a simple constellation of particular physical and socio-legal characteristics. In the built environment around us we increasingly see examples of an attempt to boost defensible space and the means to exclude the unwanted. This has meant that we can now observe a continuum of ‘gating’ which can be seen moving between symbolic and more concrete examples. Suburban areas with booms across private roads, housing estates with ‘buffer zones’ of grass and derelict land, and cul-de-sacs all express a mark of exclusion to non-residents with varying degrees of efficacy. All of these built forms suggest a lack of ‘permeability’ in the built environment directed at achieving increasingly privatised lifestyles, predominantly through the pursuit of security. It is this attempt at self-imposed exclusion from the wider neighbourhood, as well as the exclusion of others from the gated community, which has driven a much wider debate about the relative merits of gating and other strategies to achieve security, when set alongside other key concerns such as freedom of access to the wider city, social inclusion and territorial justice.” (p.178)

Under the title “The Fortified Neighbourhood” (which I rather like), Atkinson and Blandy acknowledge that “It is now well documented that gated communities can be seen as a response to the fear of crime (Atkinson et al., 2004) but other drivers also appear significant. In particular the desire for status, privacy and the investment potential of gated dwellings all form important aspects of the motivation to live behind gates.” (p.178)

“Many have argued that GCs represent a search for community with residents seeking contact with like-minded people who socially mirror their own aspirations. While advertising by developers (primarily in America) draws on this communitarian ideology it has been clear to some that the idea of a gated ‘community’ is something of an oxymoron. Increasing numbers of recorded neighbour disputes and conflict between residents and their management companies suggest at least as many problems as are found in ‘normal’ developments (see for example, Linford, 2001). …. In this volume Evan McKenzie picks up on this theme and argues that gated communities increasingly contain residents openly hostile to the strictures to which they have signed up…. The possibility that GCs contain some kind of built-in obsolescence may become increasingly apparent.” (p.179)

“Even before getting into a debate about the relative merits of gating we find systematic research which suggests that the shelter from fear that gated communities appear to
represent soon fades once residents move in. Research by Low (2003) suggests that living ‘behind the gates’ actually promotes fear of the unknown quantities of social contact
outside them. The lack of predictability and experience of people in social situations outside these compounds appears to play out most strongly for the young, particularly those brought up in gated communities. / In fact, perceived safety and actual crime rates have been found to be no different between gated communities and similar, but non-gated, high-income American neighbourhoods.” (p.181)

“We have argued that the contractual legal framework is an essential characteristic of GCs. These detailed rules indicate a different and much more formal structure than the framework of informal rights and rules developed in a neighbourhood through “neighbours understanding the importance of maintaining a shared and reciprocated set of values and neighbourhood attributes” (Webster, 2003, p. 2606). It has been suggested [-p.183] that GCs are an example of a much wider rise in contractual governance, resulting from the new relationship between state, market and civil society, designed to address concerns about social order: the contract of membership takes centre stage in the age of ‘responsibilisation’, in which “exclusion from club goods may be tantamount to exclusion from key aspects of citizenship.” (Crawford, 2003, p. 500).” (pp.182-183)

walled in or walled out? – America’s gated communities

Opening the panel session, “Gated Communities in America”, Edward J. Blakely asks “regarding gated communities …, Are you walling something in, or are you trying to wall something out?” (p.879).

Before handing this question on for discussion, though, he points out that these gated communities are largely to be found in “the high-concentration areas: Los Angeles, Phoenix, Houston, Miami, Chicago, New York,” and notes: “These are the areas that are having the most rapid in-migration. And the in-migration, particularly of people of color, has led people to say, “I’ve got to set a boundary. No longer can I just move out now. I’m going to put my stakes down here, and I’m going to control my territory.”” (p.879)

Mary Gail Snyder asks “Is there less crime? No. Do people feel them to be more secure? Yes, until they’ve actually moved in. That’s the short answer to that question. Fear of crime—physical security concerns—is one of the primary motivations for people moving into gated communities, but it’s not the only motivation. When people are talking about how secure they feel in their gated communities, they’re talking about freedom from exposure to canvassers or strangers of any sort.” (p.888)

Blakely, similarly, notes: “It’s interesting, this perception issue. As a matter of fact, we found that, because people felt so comfortable, they lost track of who most criminals are—usually the young person who brings another young person, who’s a friend, into the place. There’s a gated community in Southern California we were in with a population of 30,000 people and a crime rate that is slightly higher than in other cities of 30,000.” (p.889) He also observes: “But to be quite frank, there are fewer crimes directly against people. You don’t get mugged on the street, and auto theft goes down because it’s harder to get the automobile out past the gate. But residents drive their automobiles out, so you might as well steal it in the shopping center. Wait until it gets out from behind the gate. Why penetrate the gate to steal the automobile?” (p.889)

Approaching this discussion from a different angle, Gil Chin observes: “we would say easily, “Yes, I’m a member of the global community,” but in the meantime, in our local community, we are building walls. And I think to a certain extent this reflects American politics and foreign policy. I have observed increasingly that the United States as a nation is building a wall around itself. This is the country that is most difficult for foreigners to get into. And with the conservative politics of some people, I think people in the community may feel it is okay to have our own wall around us. So gated communities reflect national politics.” (p.890)

During the session, Richard Legates declared: “I guess I came to this panel with a knee-jerk dislike of gated communities. Nothing here has made me like them any better, particularly, but I have been educated. It’s much more a symbolic issue than I had thought. It seems to me the objections I had to gated communities were primarily around class segregation, racial segregation, private appropriation of public space, and then just sort of a cultural dislike of privileged, scared, conservative communities. I think those impressions have been borne out. On the other hand, the gate seems to be almost irrelevant in a lot of ways.” (p.894)

Ref: (emphases in blue bold) Robert E. Lang & Karen A. Danielsen (1997): Gated communities in America: Walling out the world?, Housing Policy Debate, 8:4, 867-899

This article revisits and reproduces the Friday, November 7, 1997, Panel Session: “Gated Communities in America” “Planning in the Americas” Conference, Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, November 6–9, 1997, Fort Lauderdale, FL (moderated by Edward J. Blakely). It is this session that is referenced above.

On children raised in gated communities

Introducing the Panel Session: “Gated Communities in America”, Lang and Danielsen state: “[Gary] Pivo …considers the symbolic impact that gated communities have on children who pass through the gate on a daily basis. He is concerned that symbolic distinctions between life within the walls and life outside will produce adults who disengage from civic participation in the larger community. He also raises an interesting sociological question concerning whether children raised in gated communities will develop a sense of very hard lines between their class and others.” (p.874)

Pivo himself said: “Can I say something here about children and symbolism, because I’m concerned about the wall and the gate as a physical symbol? I’ve recently been reading the work of some childhood development people on the problem of porno shops in neighborhoods.
What they were talking about in particular is how kids use images to define the kinds of people that are okay and not okay and how they use their neighborhood territory quite a lot for collecting these images. I’m afraid that children who are raised going through a gate four times a day with their folks in the car will develop a much stronger “in-crowd, outside-group” mentality.” (p.896)

Ref: (emphases in blue bold) Robert E. Lang & Karen A. Danielsen (1997): Gated communities in America: Walling out the world?, Housing Policy Debate, 8:4, 867-899

New urbanism and gated communities

Considering development trends in the postmodern city, Jill Grant explains “The traditional suburb is oriented to the car and family. / In many areas, however, alternative development approaches appeal to consumers. Among the options are New Urbanist developments and gated communities. While New Urbanism and gated enclaves reflect divergent planning principles, development practice reveals that they tend to occur in the same general areas and that they create residential environments with a great deal in common. Moreover, they respond to similar perceptions of crisis in the contemporary city” (p.482)

She acknowledges that: “Many would argue that New Urbanism and gated communities are in some ways opposites. For instance, the Congress for the New Urbanism (2005) suggests that in deciding which communities constitute authentic New Urbanist projects, the first premise is to “[r]ule out any project that is gated.” Because New Urbanism seeks to embrace the city, New Urbanists see gated communities as enclaves that shut the city out—and therefore as anathema. While New Urbanism advocates diversity and mixing, gated projects promise homogeneity and separate residential uses behind a veil of privilege.” (p.483)

However, Grant also points out “when we study New Urbanism and gated projects in Canada, we discover that despite their physical differences, they share many features and occupy common regions. Both types of projects reveal popular strategies that developers use for packaging new suburbs as attractive commodities. Both respond to the same fears and concerns about the contemporary city. As Sandercock suggested, “The current popularity of both the ‘new urbanism’ and gated communities is the latest manifestation of [a]…denial of diversity and fear of difference” (1999, 13). Both reflect a popular search for civility, character, and authenticity in the urban environment and a reliance on surveillance for social control in the contemporary city (Christopherson 1994). Like other planning movements of the previous century, New Urbanism and gated enclaves respond to the perceived loss of a sense of community in industrial cities (Morris 1996; Talen 2000). The desire for an imaginary or imagined community without conflict leads consumers to look for sanitized and nonthreatening suburban environments of the kind promised by these contemporary movements (Christopherson 1994; Knox 2005; Kohn 2004).” (p.893)

Turning more specifically to the Canadian context, Grant writes that “both project types most commonly represent affluent communities that adopt private design strategies to address public policy problems. Following Newman’s (1973) model, they employ design methods to reinforce social control and establish defensible space. Rather than offering general solutions to the crises that afflict contemporary urban [-p.894] development, these approaches meet the needs of particular niche markets in high-growth urban regions. As Giddens wrote, “In modern social life, the notion of lifestyle takes on a particular significance. The more tradition loses its hold, and the more daily life is reconstituted in terms of the dialectical interplay of the local and the global, the more individuals are forced to negotiate lifestyle choices among a diversity of options” (1991, 5). New Urbanism and gated developments represent lifestyle options for those with the resources to choose the kind of places they want to inhabit: domiciles for the successful.” (pp.893-894) Interesting!!!

Ref: Jill L. Grant (2007): Two sides of a coin? New urbanism and gated communities, Housing Policy Debate, 18:3, 481-501

‘Gatedness’ and risk society – Dupuis and Thorns

In their analysis of gated communities (using New Zealand gated communities as a case study), Ann Dupuis & David Thorns suggest we “…push the concept of gatedness beyond a type of physical location into a more general social process.” (p.149) They suggest “gating can be interpreted as a manifestation of a particular type of mentality that arises from a set of deeply felt concerns about the nature of late modern [-p.150] society.” (pp.149-150)

“Contemporary gated communities have been described as the newest form of fortified community (Blakely & Snyder, 1995, p. 2). Such communities, where security and protection are major features, can be found in different forms across the world. These include security villages and neighbourhood enclosures in South Africa (Jurgens & Landman, 2006), common interest developments in the USA (McKenzie, 2006), gated developments in post-Communist China (Giroir, 2006; Webster et al., 2006), private guarded neighbourhoods in the Middle East (Glasze, 2006) and enclaves for transnational elites in diverse countries (Webster et al., 2002).” (p.145)

“In this article we argue that gated communities can be viewed as one form of global urban response to deep-seated concerns people face in the contemporary world, where change has been rapid and previous modes of living have been disrupted. Change, at the level of personal lives, within communities, urban areas and at the national level is evident in, for example, increased mobility, large-scale migration, population diversity, workplace changes and increased anxiety over personal safety arising from increased risk of terrorist attacks. Such widespread change has created conditions where the quest for safety and security has become more central to everyday living (Tulloch & Lupton, 2003).

“To encompass these broader currents of change we suggest moving from the specificity of gated communities to consider a broader concept of ‘gatedness’. We describe gatedness as a psychological response which results in and leads to a range of ‘forting up’ behaviours that appear to share similar characteristics. To explain this transition we draw on the risk society literature as the starting point for our argument. Within this literature the problems cited as features of contemporary society are linked to an increased level of risk and flowing from this a heightened sense of anxiety and a general decline of trust. These features result in the weakening of the role and institutions of the state,with an attendant emphasis on the importance of markets and individual communities, not as gated communities per se, but rather as an empirical phenomenon which can be analysed through the risk literature. The connection is then made between risk consciousness, the development of widely held anxieties and the decline in trust evident in recent decades. Finally, the analysis explores the idea of the ‘mentality of gatedness’ and the link between this condition and the growth in forting up practices in everyday life which are responses to increased levels of anxiety and risk.” (p.147)

“A limitation of the current explanations for the rise of gated communities is that they do not link this rise to broader societal concerns. While there has been much debate in the literature about the value of gated communities, the tendency has been to explore issues within the framework of urban planning debates or political control and governance issues and the privatisation of public space. However, Foldvary (1994) has attempted to extend the debate and draw the connection between gated communities and a neo-liberal political agenda by arguing that gated communities exemplify urban efficiency allowing collectively consumed goods to be supplied in optimal quantities by the market. McKenzie (2003) adds further to this debate by being critical of gated communities precisely because they reflect neo-liberal views on privatism and the role of the state. / In our view the connection between the ascendancy of neo-liberal politics and the growth of gated communities is relevant to our consideration of the development of gated communities in New Zealand.” (p.148)

Describing the concept of ‘The Risk Society’ Dupuis and Thorns write:
“Possibly the most influential theorist in the sociological literature on risk has been Ulrich Beck. His book Risk Society (Beck, 1992a) set the parameters of the debate around the nature of risk in contemporary Western societies. This text was followed up in 1995 by Ecological Politics in the Age of Risk and in 1999 by World Risk Society and by a number of journal articles and book chapters (Beck, 1992b, 1996a, b) and by two important texts with collaborators (Beck et al., 1994; Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 1995).
Beck’s general thesis is that risk is the key feature which sets apart the current period, which he terms ‘reflexive modernity’, from earlier ‘simple modernity’ (or industrial society). It is therefore risk that has been the basis for the fundamental changes that have occurred since the 1970s (Lash & Wynne, 1992, p. 3). Beck is not arguing that risk is new. There have always been risks; what has changed however is the nature of risk in reflexive modernity. For example, worker exploitation leading to unemployment and workplace accidents is a typical risk of modernity, whereas the risks of late modernity take the form of ‘manufactured uncertainties’, emanating largely from two sources: high-tech risks and ecologically based risks (Beck, 1999). An example of the former is computer viruses with the potential to disrupt every facet of the infrastructure of entire cities or even countries, while examples of the latter are genetic engineering, and the contamination of food crops and global warming. Many risks connect both technology and ecology. The key difference Beck notes is that in modernity wealth and ‘goods’ were produced, but in late modernity the production of ‘goods’ is accompanied simultaneously with the production of ‘bads’, or risks. As a consequence Beck depicts late modernity as ‘a catastrophic society’ where catastrophes are brought about by the repeated crises of science and technology.

In contrast to previous eras, where risks to do with the environment such as floods or famines were understood to have their basis in nature and so were seen as problems external to human beings, contemporary risks are created by humans themselves. The “ecological, biomedical, social, military, political, economic, financial, symbolic and informational” (Van Loon, 2002, p. 1) risks of late modernity, while clearly impacting on nature, cannot be said to have their basis in nature. Rather, the source of risk is the “internal crisis of science- and technology-based industrial society, affecting both its production process and its core institutions” (Strydom, 2002, p. 55), the basis of which is the complexity of the social and technical systems in which risks are embedded. This complexity is such that on the one hand, the possibility of self-annihilation is very real, and on the other, there is no individual, group or governing apparatus that can take control and rein in the dangers or, for that matter, be accountable, or take ultimate responsibility for their production. The contradiction for Beck is one of ‘paradigm confusion’, where the new types of risks characteristic of late modernity are still being confronted with the inadequate approaches of modernity.” (p.150)

“Within the risk society literature much is made of the role of the media in disseminating risk awareness.” (p.150)

Ref: (emphases in blue bold, mine) Ann Dupuis & David Thorns (2008): Gated Communities as Exemplars of ‘Forting Up’ Practices in a Risk Society, Urban Policy and Research, 26:2, 145-157

ABSTRACT This article challenges existing ways of thinking about the proliferation of gated communities. The catalyst for the article was the observation that gated communities have appeared recently in New Zealand where many of the extreme conditions that have driven their emergence in other places are much less obvious. This counterfactual encouraged an exploration of an alternative explanation for the prevalence of gated communities to those of lifestyle, elitism, fear of crime and protection of property values. In this endeavour the emphasis shifts from gated communities as physical and spatial objects to the idea of ‘gatedness’, a mental construct that characterises the nature of existence in a risk society. It is argued that the proliferation of gated communities is one example of individualised ‘forting up’ practices that have become increasingly common as the trust in public institutions to manage the perceived increase in risk has declined. What ensues at the level of everyday life is greater attention to home security and concerns with bodily safety and travel. The article points to the need for empirical work to explore further the extent to which the mentality of gatedness shapes current social practices.

Reference is to: Tulloch, J. & Lupton, D. (2003) Risk and Everyday Life (London: Sage).

how everyday emotions are being transformed by post 9/11 measures and terror talk

According to Setha M. Low (writing from the USA 5 years ago): “We are enmeshed in a historical period when fear and anxiety are being manipulated to produce unhealthy political ends. The consequences of this social atmosphere are not just political, but produce increasing fears in children and an obsession with safety and security that is claiming ground and appropriating feelings even within the ultimate retreat – home.” (p.62)

“Since September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has mobilized a discourse of insecurity to create a psychological environment that allows the constriction of liberty in the USA, while continuing an unpopular war in Iraq.” (p.47)

She goes on to say that “political manipulation of terrorism and threat from outside is inscribing a new structure of feeling based on fear, and re-inscribing the paranoia of the Cold War period to further militaristic and imperialist aims. / This fear and insecurity discourse is becoming equally salient in Western Europe, in the form of a war against terrorism and discrimination against Muslim immigrant populations. These repressive actions have been justified by the well-publicized terrorist attacks in London and Madrid, while France has experienced widespread riots in the immigrant suburbs of Paris, based on anti-Muslim sentiment.” (p.47)

“One [-p.48] response to this production of insecurity,” Low writes, “has been increased surveillance and policing, as well as residential fortification, including the building of gated communities. Even though gating predates this period of homeland security and terrorist threat, it symbolically and materially accommodates these fears and provides a superficial sense of protection.
Catherine Lutz and Geoffrey White argue that the months of terror post-9/11 generated a tremendous overload of emotion and that this emotion has been ‘‘learned, half-learned, resisted, reformulated or ignored’’ by intense cultural tutoring that shapes how we make sense of what we feel (Lutz & White 2002:6). They conceptualize the emotions and the practices they represent as ‘‘emotive institutions’’, illustrating how media discursive practices evoke and reform emotions through television war news.
These emotive institutions are one component of the production of a new structure of feeling expressed in a variety of material and discursive forms including architecture and urban planning. Neoliberal practices of the shrinking state and the re-inscription of responsibility on individuals and communities are the second component in this process. Individuals and communities in cities are encouraged to protect themselves from perceived threats, thus contributing to the emergence of a new pattern of civic militancy even at home.” (pp.47-48)

“In this article,” Low explains, “I outline my concerns [about how everyday emotions are being transformed by post-9/11 measures and terror talk and how they are infiltrating the most private of spatial domains, that of home] and provide ethnographic illustrations from gated communities on how new emotive institutions are emerging and transforming the domestic emotional climate.” (p.48)

Low presents a very interesting discussion of how our concept of (and relationship with) the ‘home’ has developed in recent centuries (pp.48-50). She also presents a history of gated communities in the USA along with an ethnographic study of gated communities in New York and Texas (pp.50-61).

According to Low: “The gated community is a response to transformations in the political economy of late-20th century urban America. The increasing mobility of capital, marginalization of the labour force, and dismantling of the welfare state began with the change in labour practices and deindustrialization of the 1970s, and accelerated with the ‘‘Reaganomics’’ of the 1980s.” (p.51)

“Walls can provide a refuge from people who are deviant or unusual, but this necessitates patrolling the border to make sure no-one gets in. The resulting vigilance necessary to maintain these ‘‘purified communities’’ actually heightens residents’ anxiety and sense of isolation, rather than making them feel safer (Flusty 1997). In some cases, the micro-politics of exclusion is about distinguishing oneself from the family who used to live next door. Status anxiety about downward mobility due to declining male wages and family incomes, shrinking job markets, and periodic economic recessions has increased concern that children will not be able to sustain a middle-class lifestyle. Middle-class status anxiety also takes the form of symbolic separation from other families who have fallen on hard times, families who share many of the same values and aspirations, but who for some reason ‘‘did not make it’’. The ‘‘exclusivity’’ and ‘‘status’’ advertised by new gated communities is being marketed to an already anxious audience created by the economic turbulence of the 1980s. Assurances that walls and gates maintain home values and provide some kind of ‘‘class’’ or ‘‘distinction’’ is heard by prospective buyers as a partial solution to upholding their middle- or upper middle-class position. / Crime and the fear of crime also have been connected to the design of the built environment.” (p.53)

“Most gated community residents say that they are moving because of their fear of crime, but what residents are expressing is a pervading sense of insecurity with life in the USA. Policing, video surveillance, gating, walls and guards do not work because they do not address the basis of what is an emotional reaction. An ever-growing proportion of people fear that they will be victimized. Not surprisingly, then, fear of crime has increased since the mid-1960s, even though there has been a decline in all violent crime since 1990 (Brennan & Zelinka 1997, Flusty 1997, Stone 1996). It is not an entirely new sense of insecurity, but comes from increasing globalization, declining economic conditions and economic restructuring, the retreat of the state from social reproduction and the overall insecurity of capitalism. 9/11 and Homeland Security combined with neoliberal practices that have shifted the responsibility for security to individuals and communities have exacerbated it.” (p.56)

“Compared with most large cities, suburbs do not have many public places were strangers intermingle, and the relative isolation and homogeneity of the suburbs discourages interaction with people who are identified as the ‘‘other’’.” (p.56)

“Barry Glassner (1999) argues that news reporting capitalizes on our greatest fears proposing that it is easier to worry about ‘‘Mexicans’’ or ‘‘workers’’ – focusing on symbolic substitutes – rather than face our moral insecurities and more systematic social problems. The bombing of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 has [-p.60] added to this discursive repertoire of fear and insecurity for New York residents.” (pp.59-60)

“West and Orr (2005) [found] ‘‘The more people talked about 9/11, the more worried they became about becoming a victim’’ (West & Orr 2005:99). Defensive behaviour of not going downtown and staying home, encouraging increased home surveillance (Low 2003), and hiring professional security guards (West & Orr 2005) as well as building home based safe rooms and keeping two weeks of supplies on hand in a safe place, have emerged as common home behaviours with negative– fearful and anxious–emotional reactions. 9/11 has had an impact on people not only in New York City but also along the entire Northeast corridor, and in other large cities like Los Angeles.
Whether it is black salesmen, errant workers or fear of a terrorist attack, the message is the same: residents are using walls, gates and guards to keep perceived dangers outside of their homes and neighbourhoods. Contact with others and symbolic substitutes or explanations for their sense of insecurity incites palpable fear and real concern, and in response they are moving to secured residential developments where they can keep other people out. The perceived threats of crime, other people, a porous neighbourhood that is easily entered, and terrorist attacks engender a defensive emotional climate within which residents attempt to create safe and comfortable homes. But the reactive emotions of home – fear, insecurity, worry, paranoia and anxiety – dominate their conversations.” (p.61)

“…fear of others and an emotional shift in the local environment play significant roles in the transformation of how residents feel about their home places.” (p.61) “These reactive emotions, however, are not independent of the historical moment in which they occur and are sustained by a social and political context of fear and distrust.” (p.62)

“A new structure of feeling promoted by the Bush administration is creating a citizenry more concerned with protecting their homes than with protecting social and political freedom.” (p.62)

Ref: (emphases in blue bold, mine) Setha M. Low (2008): Fortification of Residential Neighbourhoods and the New Emotions of Home, Housing, Theory and Society, 25:1, 47-65

ABSTRACT Research on the fortification of residential environments and the spatial production of ‘‘security’’ within gated communities has lead to a broader understanding of how everyday emotions are being transformed by post 9/11 measures and terror talk. A new structure of feeling is infiltrating the most private of spatial domains, that of home, and further rationalizes and legitimates the practices of social exclusion, fortification, and racialization of space that mark current sociospatial politics. This article presents ethnographic illustrations from gated communities in New York and San Antonio, Texas, of how new emotive institutions are emerging and transforming the domestic emotional climate.

Reference is to: Lutz, C. & White, G. (2002) Emotions, war and cable News, Anthropology News, February, pp. 6–7.

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