Urban Forms in Suburbia
The Rise of the Edge City
Part 3 :
Contents :
Part 5
One of the by-products of Edge City is the private government. At their heart,
Edge Cities are capitalist creations, driven by market forces. They respond to
the pressures of wealth and are created as a result of perceived consumer
demand. The people of the edges have come to realize this connection between
money and results, and indeed expect it in other areas of their lives. However,
this is not the way government has traditionally worked in the United States.
People obey governments in modern times not out of fear but because governments
provide services in exchange for the acceptance of their authority. A parallel
development to the spread of urbanism was the transition from government as
police force and representative voice to the role of provider of public goods.
Public goods are those things that benefit all people, yet few people can
afford individually. Governments are not followed through a direct cause and
effect relationship based on services, though. Rather, people desire to live
under a certain system of rules and public governments seem like a good idea to
most.
Living under the power of a government is not a choice in modern society. Their
influence has been all but taken for granted since Locke's time, and today it
is agreed that they serve a valid purpose and must continue. Federal
governments in particular are important because of their ability to pool the
vast resources of a country to get certain things done. After defense and
international relations are provided for, federal governments can afford
massive expenditures on projects from scientific exploration to disaster
relief. State governments, too, are important for performing similar duties on
a regional scale.
It is on a city or town level that problems arise. Perhaps it is because of its
enormity, but the general citizen cannot relate to problems in the Federal
government. He can, however, understand the problems that face him every day,
and these are the public goods that local governments address. Children need to
be sent to schools. Roads need upkeep. New development projects need
consideration. This should be the local government's forte, however too often
they are unable to handle these chores. Often, town governments are too small
to adequately address these concerns, while old city governments are too large
to see them properly. Towns must rely on experts, who are difficult to find,
and cities must pass things to committees or departments that may not be
responsive or see the implications of their actions for individuals.
"others praise the evolution of the suburban megalopolis as the inevitable and
desirable expression of our new technologies and hyper-individualized culture."
(Kelbaugh, p. 19)
Always alert for a bargain, Edge Cityites have come up with a novel answer to
these problems of scale and consideration: They hire a government. According to
the rules of the market system, individuals are hired to solve specific
problems and manage specific tasks of keeping up the private grounds of edge
development. Often these private entities do such a good job that their
jurisdiction is expanded to cover unrelated but important areas of civic
service. Soon, full-blown governments have evolved in response to certain
market needs. These governments have the power to levy taxes, to create and
enforce laws, and to provide for the (private) public good. They are good old
town governments in all senses except one: They are not democratic.
One of the most prevalent private government forms is that of the tenant's
association. Legally provided for in initial leases, tenants' associations are
normally contracted by the developer of a unit. They are given specific,
obvious duties to keep the community running smoothly. These often include
enforcement of lease regulations, care of grounds, and provision of security.
Sometimes tenants' associations can grow to take on new tasks. In some cases,
they become powerful community governments, overshadowing and overpowering the
local municipal government in the process.
The need for tenants' associations lies in the particularly capitalist take on
public space found in most planned residential developments. Rather than
leaving the care of lawns and driveways up to individual owners, or initiative,
developers provide for the creation of an association to take care of these
things. This association usually includes both elected and paid positions.
Normally, all those who own property in a development are allowed to run for a
"presidential" position to oversee the community. The powers of this position,
though, generally extend only to creation and enforcement of the rules of the
development. The paid position, usually a building manager, takes care of
collecting and spending money and of bringing in new tenants when needed.
Tenants' associations collect income through fees specified in leases. Failure
to pay these fees usually results in termination of the lease and expulsion
from the community. In a way, these fees are taxes: they must be paid; they can
be changed by officials; they provide for the public good. Developments are run
as small business and the tenants' association must be effective since their
services are paid directly by concerned individuals. Generally, too, tenants'
associations are remarkably effective in taking care of a development's common
areas.
When they are happy with the performance of their officials, tenants often
demand that more duties be taken on by them. Often the small towns which host
developments are ill-prepared to afford the services required by the tenants,
sometimes even giving up a fair share of taxes in order to attract development.
With poor service from the municipal governments, tenants often turn to their
private government to rectify things. Sometimes this takes the form of new
duties for the tenants' association, from snow plowing and pothole filling to
police protection. Soon the development is acting on its own separate from the
municipality.
Shopping centers, too, employ a form of private government. Here, the mall
developer hires an office to run the mall outright. There is no democracy at
all in the mall. The administration spends most of its time taking care of
mundane things like upkeep, advertising, and maintaining the mall as a
business. However, the administration of a mall is empowered with other
functions, too. Malls must provide security, so they often employ a relatively
large force of uniformed (but not police-trained) guards. Often, too, they
provide covert surveillance for the tenant stores. When a shoplifter is caught,
the security forces can detain and question him pending arrest by real police
officers. Mall administration controls the placement of shops and stalls on its
property, too. The most desirable spots are subject to much competition on the
part of the vendors. The mall administration also has the final say over which
vendors are allowed in the mall at all, and can set rents as high as the market
will bear. Since most shops must relocate from the old downtowns to the malls,
mall officials, though not elected, really have the final power over all retail
in an area.
There is a more insidious implication of these private governments. Since
developments and malls lie completely on private property, almost all actions
and powers of private governments are legally permissible. Some tenants'
associations will declare certain townspeople "undesirable" and refuse to allow
them entrance to a significant part of their own town. Malls maintain
"blacklists" of those who are not allowed inside. Private governments are
allowed to disallow certain activities within their jurisdiction. Picketing and
public speaking is not allowed. Certain groups are banned as well. In a recent
court case in Virginia, a mall security director was quoted as saying that no
one has any constitutional rights on mall property. This extends to search and
seizure as well. By setting foot within the jurisdiction of a private
government on private property, an individual accepts the authority of a non
democratic and unchecked power.
There are both benefits and drawbacks to the empowerment of private
governments. Being market-driven institutions, private governments are very
responsive to changing needs. Lacking overhead, they are also extremely
efficient in the delivery of services. Also, people feel that their money is
being spent in ways that they can see and care about. Private governments feel
like a good deal.
The greatest benefit of private governments, indeed the reason they exist at
all, is individual choice. Just like at a market, the consumer can choose
exactly what he wants and what is valuable to him. In tenants' associations,
this means that the prospective tenant can choose to live in one development
and pay for luxurious service or another and just get what is necessary. The
individual is directly involved in the places his money goes. The same holds
true to a point with malls. Retail tenants do not often have a great deal of
choice in locations. There is, however, some choice provided by competing
malls, especially in mature Edge Cities like Houston which has six huge malls.
Additionally, some services provided by private governments would be
unattainable in a standard public one. Some tenants' associations guarantee
that a (private) police officer will be at the door of any house in the
development within 5 minutes of an alarm sounding. Others guarantee parking
spaces in front of a townhouse. Towns often force extremely high standards on
new developments as well. Often developers install the latest in high
technology sewage treatment on site and build exceptionally sturdy roads for
access. The tenants are willing to pay more for excellent service.
The tenants feel good about their expenditures, too. They usually do not feel
that their money is going into a huge, faceless pool never to be seen again.
Instead, they can see the results of their fees all around them. Since tenants
of a certain development tend to be similar types of people, they feel that
everyone is paying his fair share and getting equal benefits. tenants'
associations are usually very small and so are able to get by with very low
overhead costs as well.
There are many negatives to private governments, too. Many people are locked
out of their benefits because of their capitalist nature. Due to
gentrification, the old, publicly served areas tend to suffer from lack of
funding for necessary programs. Also, private associations are loath to provide
extra services, even necessary ones, if they were not paid for.
The primary, and obvious, problem with market-based governments is that some
public-good functions consist of sharing wealth to those who do not have it.
Private governments make no concessions for those who are less financially
able. Therefore, certain people cannot have the benefits of private
governments. They can shop at a mall and enjoy the security or air conditioning
but cannot truly make use of such a place since it functions mainly as a place
for people to spend money. Many malls, in fact, would remove anyone who looked
as though they could not afford to shop at the stores there, especially if they
spent an inordinate amount of time there. Tenants' associations, too, would
probably remove a lower class person who wandered in. Not only can some people
not take advantage of private governments, but they are actively unwanted on
private property.
The move of the upper classes to private governments hurts the old public
municipalities as well. Even if they live in a private compound, everyone must
use the public roads from time to time. Already paying a great deal to their
tenants' association for overlapping services, many Edge Cityites balk at
paying municipal taxes. There have been cases of tenants' associations banding
together to defeat tax measures in town government. The association has a great
deal of power over a very vocal group of people and can often get enough
support to protect its own interests over those of the town. Even in the best
circumstances, though, the exodus of the upper classes to private developments
leaves just the working class and largely unemployed under class in the old
cities, and they can ill afford to support the municipality on their own. The
Edge City benefits from the municipal government but does not pay, causing a
reverse subsidy.
Even if they wanted to support the less wealthy people of the town, private
governments are usually chartered to forbid this. Most tenants would argue that
supporting the outside community out of "their" money would be wrong. Often,
like a business, they run so close to the margin that private governments
cannot afford any extra money in an emergency. If the sewage plant does fail,
and there is not enough money left to do it with, the government is in a
quandry since it rarely has the authority or power to borrow money.
Private governments and Edge Cities are intimately related. People moved out
into the edges to escape from the pressures of the city. Among those pressures
is inequality of need and service. In the true capitalist way, once they had
escaped from the every day sight of problems, people no longer wanted to pay to
address them. Why live under an "unfair" and unresponsive democratic government
when one can create one's own for less?
In the edge, people come to expect that they will get what they have paid for.
Life consists of one consumer choice after another, both at work and at play.
The Edge City dweller values, above all else, his private space. This includes
both his home and children. Edge Cities offer security, both in their
spaciousness and thanks to the work of their little governments. Edge City also
offers plenty of money, since most Edge City jobs are grey- or white collar.
That is a good thing, since the cost of living there is huge.
The problem with this migration to extraurban areas is that, out there, there
is no government ready for it. Edge cities grow up spontaneously in the
peripheries. In small towns, the open space is in the outskirts, so Edge Cities
fill these in, often crossing multiple municipal boundaries. It is difficult
here to say exactly which town one lives in. This leads to problems with the
tax base since towns traditionally bring in money from property taxes. Towns
are also faced with the tough question of whether or not to preserve their old
downtown or try to cater to the emerging edge and hope for economic growth.
Part 3 :
Contents :
Part 5