Sarah Blandy

Introduction: International Perspectives on The New Enclavism and the Rise of Gated Communities

This volume gathers together substantially revised versions of papers first presented in Glasgow, Scotland in September 2003. This event was an international meeting of academics who discussed the significance, relative problems and benefits associated with the international rise of gated communities. 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

Panic Rooms: The Rise of Defensive Homeownership

This paper documents how and attempts to explain why homeowners have adopted an increasingly strategic approach to the defence of the home and the progressively vengeful pursuit of those who invade the home. This approach has been articulated via the political process as well as through a media ‘conversation’ that form a milieu within which defensive homeownership has emerged. It is suggested that a threshold has been crossed marking a transformative moment in which left-leaning calls for understanding have been supplanted by a call for the increasingly vicious defence of home territories. In a broader context of neo-liberalism the transition toward increased privatism, freedom of choice and unfettered agency now closely correspond to the position of homeowners as ‘consumer sovereigns’. Defensive homeownership therefore appears not only as the aspiration of homeowners for safety but also as a result of a complex interrelationship between political, media and ideological systems that have generated strong impressions of risk and victimisation. The paper documents the powerful socio-legal and political discourses which have reinforced territorial instincts while generating a broader culture of fear played out through celebrated cases in the public domain. In conclusion, it is argued that defensive homeownership expresses an aggressive aspect of the socio-political constitution of that tenure and a broader need for the deployment of cathartic public policies in defence of embattled home territories.

Law, Boundaries and the Production of Space

This special issue addresses the problematic nature of space, whether psychic, symbolic or material, from an inter-disciplinary standpoint. The diverse articles are concerned with legal, psychical, cultural, social and political boundaries. Spaces with legal meanings are the product of such boundaries, and the relation of law and space as explored by the legal geography literature underpins this collection, which investigates these issues at a range of spatial scales, from the scale of the self to the global. In considering the continuum of tension between fear and desire manifest in individuals’ internalized boundaries, we need also to make use of theories developed in psychoanalysis and social psychology. Kleinian ‘splitting’, for example, offers an explanation of law’s role in the creation and maintenance of strong boundaries which exclude ‘othered’ groups. Law’s power as a discourse is challenged by internal contradictions at the international scale, when human rights arguments confront state territorial jurisdiction; while at the other end of the scalar spectrum, regulation of conduct depends both on accepted legal notions of the self-governing individual and on assumptions of shared moral values. Other articles in this issue emphasize the nature of boundaries as liminal spaces full of attendant ambiguity, which, although legally established and enforced, prove in fact to be remarkably permeable. The interdisciplinary perspectives developed in this issue demonstrate the need to further problematize boundaries and to acknowledge the complexity of material, social and mental spaces.

From Tenure to Rights: Conceptualizing the Changing Focus of Housing Law in England

This paper suggests a new way of conceptualizing tenure as a series of discourses that comprise respectively: (a) property law; (b) housing policy; and (c) housing status. Housing research has generally focused on housing policy discourse in a way that obscures legal relationships. In contrast, a focus on property and housing status has greater potential to make explicit the rights and obligations that arise in different situations. The ?bundle of rights? view provides the most acceptable statement of tenure relations in housing. It is the only view that covers both property and housing status and that can also make sense of tendencies towards juridification. The implication for research is to focus on the exact terms of rights, their changing distribution between different parties and their scope for enforcement. If research extends to a review of the origins and continuing rationale of rights, some form of narrative analysis is usually necessary.

The Right to Buy: Examination of an exercise in allocating, shifting and re-branding risks

This paper examines the development of the Right to Buy, introduced by the Housing Act 1980, from the standpoint of governmentality, risk and responsibilization. Our focus is on the risks not only to the purchasers but also to local authorities and to those tenants who have not purchased their homes. We trace how these risks have been assessed, allocated and rebranded, by central government, by local authorities as landlords with wider responsibility for housing issues in their local area, and by the judiciary. Our analysis, for the first time, points out the sharp contrasts between these three arms of government. Central government has promoted the Right to Buy as an opportunity through technologies such as ideological policy documents, legislation and regulations, within a governing rationality which has succeeded in normalizing the tenure of owner-occupation. Local authorities recognized from the outset the risks associated with the Right to Buy both to individual purchasers and more widely. The courts have allocated risk on the basis of individual responsibility, implicitly supporting local authorities. Despite neoliberal policies and ideology emphasizing the free market, central government has reduced or re-allocated risks through interventions to protect purchasers and also the broader community.

Reforming Leasehold: Discursive Events and Outcomes, 1984–2000

This article uses discourse analysis to explore and explain the limits of ongoing efforts to resolve the problems experienced by long leaseholders living in private flats in England and Wales. Attention is focused on the position of leasehold within the three discourses of property law, housing, and housing law, as revealed through the language used in legislation, consultation papers, Law Commission reports, political statements, media representations, and the accounts of leaseholders themselves. The implementation gap between legislative intentions and effects, so often neglected in discussion of housing policy, is explored. The article considers policy and legislation in the light of a metanarrative encompassing all aspects of the multi-occupancy of blocks of flats.

The dynamics of enduring property relationships in land

This article proposes a new way of looking at property relationships that will enrich our understanding of how they operate. It focuses on property rights in land which are consensual in origin, although this approach could usefully be applied both to non-consensual property relationships and to other property types. Recognising both the temporal and spatial dimensions of land, the dynamics approach reflects the fact that most property relationships are lived relationships, affected by changing patterns and understandings of spatial use, relationship needs, economic realities, opportunities, technical innovations, and so on. Although evolving responsively to accommodate changing uses and new rights-holders, these relationships are nevertheless sustained and enduring. The dynamics lens acknowledges the diverse range of legal, regulatory, social and commercial norms that shape property relations. Our approach also explores how far the enduring, yet dynamic, nature of property relations is taken into account by a range of decision-makers.

Socio-Legal Perspectives

This article introduces readers to the role of socio-legal studies in understanding the social world of housing and home. Socio-legal research is often interdisciplinary and may draw on a range of different theoretical and methodological perspectives from the social sciences. Several examples of socio-legal work illuminate critical aspects of housing and home, including large-scale quantitative work on housing problems, more qualitative work illustrating decision-making in cases where the home is being repossessed and within the framework of duties towards the homeless, and work, which uses law as part of an analysis of attitudes to the home and household.

Rights to Housing Tenure

In common law jurisdictions, ‘tenure’ is used in property law to mean a freehold or leasehold interest in land, but is used in housing law and policy to distinguish between owner-occupation and renting. Owner-occupation is further subdivided between outright and mortgaged ownership; freehold and long leasehold; and single dwellings and multiowned developments. The rented sector is subdivided into tenancies granted by a private landlord or a social/public landlord. Different types of occupiers derive rights from common law, and also rights which housing legislation grafts onto the tenure framework. Equally, legislation can diminish rights of occupation, for example, in the case of antisocial behaviour by tenants.