By there were an estimated , private housing developments
in the United States, , of them in Florida alone. Others are scattered,
often densely, in other southern places: near the office parks along Atlanta’s
interstate loops; a few blocks from downtown Memphis; out in the coun-
try near little West Point, Mississippi; and all around Washington, D.C.
From the mid-s to the mid-s, sixteen new gated communities ap-
peared in San Antonio alone. During the s, too, planners and prop-
erty owners in Houston and Jackson, Mississippi, verged toward privatizing
older streets— in Houston, in Jackson. Robert Reich, then the U.S.
secretary of labor, righteously decried this ‘‘secession of the successful.’’
Community homeowner associations tax themselves and demand meeting
time and talent, effectively depriving the larger urban or suburban commu-
nity of their skills and financial assets.^22
Not all enclosed and guarded neighborhoods are populated by ‘‘older,
whiter, and wealthier’’ folks, as writer Evan McKenzie characterized gated
communities inPrivatopia: Homeowner Associations and the Rise of Residen-
tial Private Government(). Collegeville, a poorer quarter of Birming-
ham, actually has a public housing complex behind high iron fences and
a gate where guards require identification of residents and visitors alike.
Collegeville got its enclosure because it was a drive-through, crime-ridden
project. The ‘‘cage’’ (as a few residents term the fence) brought safety, peace,
and quiet. Such was probably the goal of middle-class neighborhood as-
sociations in Jackson, Mississippi, during the mid-s, since Jackson’s
crime rate was on the rise. Nearly everywhere else, however, violent and
property crime declined throughout the decade and into the next cen-
tury. Security in higher-end gated communities is likely a living fiction em-
bedded in the minds of home buyers. Or it may have been merely the ex-
clusivity implied by gate and fence or wall.
Exclusivity seldom applies to domestic architectural modes, however.
Many of the most expensive houses in gated communities look about the
same, except in minor (and community-approved) details of roofline, paint
color, and trim. Architectural conformity suggests another significant as-
pect of security. A house is usually our largest financial asset, and expecting
that no home is permanent—we may be transferred, we may retire from
landscape maintenance to a condo, or we may move to be near the children
—we fear for our investment’s transferability. So the odd and unusual and
avant in architecture are typically shunned. A vast conspiracy of developers,
their designers, and real estate agents would seem to dictate also that the
conformity of each community may or may not reflect anything indigenous