The privatization of neighborhood governance and the production of urban space

Abstract

A pivotal innovation in the production of urban space has been the rise of privately governed neighborhoods overseen by homeowners associations (HOAs). One in every five American households resides in an HOA neighborhood regulated by conditions, covenants, and restrictions amounting to what has been referred to as a “quiet revolution” of urban politics. Their proliferation across cities warrants greater attention as they signify the transformation of state–civil society relations whereby nonstate entities are increasingly important actors in shaping the terrain of citizenship. HOAs are granted broad powers by the state and have profound effects on homeowners’ experiences of everyday life through regulations that generate neighborhood space. This article examines the different modalities of governance deployed by HOAs to shape homeowner participation in producing a certain yard aesthetic, namely the lawn. While the lawn is a dominant cultural landscape in the United States, we find that homeowners in privately governed neighborhoods report a greater commitment to producing a lush, green, well-manicured lawn and apply higher rates of fertilizer to their yards than households in nonprivately governed neighborhoods. Although HOAs exercise power by directly regulating homeowners’ spatial practices, they also govern indirectly by holding out the possibility of a sense of place and belonging that is connected to the production of aestheticized and commoditized landscapes. The deployment of both disciplinary and governmental forms of power supplement each other in the ongoing process of building neighborhood citizens that actively shape circuits of global capitalist investment in cities through the imaginary of neighborhood community.