I recently published my third article for the Magazine on New Urbanism (MONU), the Rotterdam-based independent journal that “focuses on the city in a broad sense, including its politics, economy, geography, ecology, its social aspects, as well as its physical structure and architecture.”
The call for articles for MONU #37 was focused on “conflict-driven urbanism,” or the exploration of urban environments as they relate to political, economic, and other forms of conflict. I proposed a satirical article, written as a memo for a fictitious organization, the North American Alliance for Gated Communities, which makes a “serious” and blindly erroneous case arguing that if cities want to eradicate conflict, they should eradicate the means of urban interaction (i.e., by creating gated communities, car reliance, residential isolation, etc.).
The article successfully created a straw man for the notion of conflict-driven urbanism, and thus serves as the opening/introductory article for the new issue.
I’m sharing the full article below, along with its various graphics (and fake citations).
Order your print copy of MONU #37 here.
MEMO: TO ERADICATE URBAN CONFLICT, ERADICATE URBAN INTERACTION
An official planning memorandum from the North American Alliance for Gated Communities (NAAGC).
RE: NAAGC Response to United Nations Statement on the New Era of Conflict and Violence
Dear Members:
On behalf of the North American Alliance for Gated Communities (NAAGC), I share your concerns regarding the recent statement from the United Nations on our so-called “new era” of conflict and violence.[1] As long-time NAAGC president, I’m proud of my work alongside all of you in advancing our 2050 strategic mission of “Building a Safer, Gated World,” and therefore agree with the sentiments of our Executive Board and volunteer committees that the UN has again overstepped its intellectual limitations by declaring a specious opinion on the state of the world.[2]
Nonetheless, there is some truth to the UN statement—however borrowed this truth may be. In particular, the organization states that “conflicts now tend to be less deadly and often waged between domestic groups rather than states.” This is precisely the same trend observed by our founders six decades ago, who surveyed the state of urban culture—especially in North America—and penned the thirteen principles of community protectionism that have since come to serve as our founding charter.[3]
In particular, the founders stated:
Conflict over unclaimed land has become the lost habit of a bygone world. Excepting some far reaches of our planet, with geographies marked by limited access, appeal, and resources, most real territory is now claimed and governed by various nations, with varying degrees of success. While global tensions remain rife, wars of territorial expansion are functionally obsolete. Conflict has therefore become socially internecine in nature and often unfolds within actual political boundaries.
The machinations of combat are fundamental to human nature, and were previously appeased by imperial aspirations, but with notions of empire finally fading into twilight, the machinations remain—but turn inwards. However, with unclaimed land bygone, we cannot avoid conflict by fleeing to some New World across a great ocean. Nor can we declare sovereignty and draw self-imposed borders between us and an imperial state (at least, not without incurring the irretrievable costs of violence). And yet, through principled planning and partnership, we can program our own gated localities of self-governance—negating superfluous social interactions and avoiding conflict as such.[4]
While we can’t claim that the UN borrowed from our own archives to reach their current opinion, what they now state as novelty is something NAAGC has known to be true since our fledgling years of the late 1960’s. The net number of war-related deaths has been declining since the end of the 1940’s. After the subsidence of WWII and the rise of new communications technologies, geopolitics soon became marked by wars of technology and information, as well as interstitial violence. But as we’ve seen with our own eyes, especially since the 1960’s (and as affirmed by the UN), conflict and violence are persistent and mounting, typically waged by activist, terrorist, militia, and other ad hoc groups. Or put in the words of the United Nations: “Unresolved regional tensions, a breakdown in the rule of law, absent or co-opted state institutions, illicit economic gain, and the scarcity of resources exacerbated by climate change, have become dominant drivers of conflict.”
These are the same drivers setting the temperature of urban politics in cities across North America. This is why, especially in response to the United Nations’ apparent enlightenment, it’s critical for all of us at NAAGC—leaders and members alike—to affirm our core policy stance on urban conflict: to eradicate urban conflict, eradicate urban interaction.[5]
With this stance in mind—and as it’s instructive for framing your conversations with lawmakers, community leaders, and fellow travelers on behalf of NAAGC—I’m proud to share a few recent examples of how this policy has played out in practice in various communities across the United States, thanks in part to the ongoing, multilateral leadership of NAAGC. (Note: We are only able to provide abbreviated cases in this memo. You can view full case histories in Gates, the official NAAGC journal.)
HOT SPRINGS VILLAGE, ARKANSAS
At 144 square kilometers with a population of approximately 12,000 people in the landlocked center of Arkansas, Hot Springs Village holds the unique honor of standing as America’s largest gated community. It’s also home to eleven recreational lakes, nine championship golf courses, thirteen tennis courts, fourteen pickleball courts, nearly fifty kilometers of walking trails, and more than two hundred clubs and organizations—all without the myriad challenges, and inevitable conflicts, of urban density.
And as shown in Figure 01, when compared against a similar land area in Barcelona, Spain, it has almost no density, and consequently, one of the lowest crime rates in the United States.[6] It has its own police and fire services, and a crime rate at least 47% lower than the United States average. (Of course, as we know at NAAGC, this low crime rate is due partly to the unique planning approach of Hot Springs Village, but due largely to the extra securities and peace-of-mind afforded by gates, fencing, and surveillance infrastructure of gated communities in general.)
Of course, living in a gated community is not without extra costs. There are more than 800 kilometers of paved road in and around Hot Springs Village. The correlated lack of density makes reliance on private automobiles an everyday necessity—and necessary cost. But this cost is borne by individuals, and not governments. And, importantly, automobiles and other forms of private transit also provide an extra physical barrier between community members. This discourages the nuisance of happenstance social interaction, and ultimately, encourages an absence of conflict.[7]
As one of NAAGC’s finest planning achievements, Hot Springs Village is also a bit of an outlier for planning vis-à-vis disincentivized urban interaction. This is because we had a uniquely sparse parcel of 144 square kilometers within which we were enabled to articulate our peak development vision. Limited by geography and political boundaries, it would be difficult to replicate the exact Hot Springs Village model in other localities, but it nonetheless serves as our gold standard for urban conflict aversion.
HICKORY, NORTH CAROLINA
The community of Hickory, North Carolina is home to around 44,000 people spread across 81 square kilometers—a classic example of a North American exurb. More broadly, it’s the most populus area of the larger Hickory–Lenoir–Morganton metropolitan statistical area, which covers more than 4,300 square kilometers with a total population nearing 370,000.
What sets Hickory apart from both its MSA and other similarly populated exurban districts is its unique and enviable designation as the most sprawling metro area in the United States.[8] While certain urbanist sects see this as a detriment, so-called “sprawl” is what NAAGC considers to be an adequate planning solution when gates, walls, and other physical barriers are disallowed for reasons of geography, local laws, or extant development guidelines.[9]
Because the history of Hickory reaches back into the late 1850’s, it predates our own association by more than a century. By the time Hickory eventually contracted NAAGC for our development guidance in 1972, we were obviously unable to apply a by-the-book solution for urban conflict avoidance—but the clients felt their equidistant exposure to Asheville, Winston-Salem, and Charlotte put them at risk civil conflicts in those cities. So we developed a guidebook that leveraged the region’s already impressive adherence to car-first infrastructure, highly restrictive zoning, extremely high minimum parking requirements, and other practices that, when combined, effectively formed a type of “policy gate” for the community.[10]
In other words, while no keycard or passcode is required to enter Hickory, the seemingly endless sprawl of the region effectively prohibits all forms of unwanted social interaction. It has more than 380 kilometers of paved roads, with one of the best main streets in the United States[11]—and it is also one of the safest communities in North Carolina.[12]
While NAAGC believes the city would be even safer if it was gated, through deliberate enforcement of sprawl it has effectively neutered the forms of conflict that otherwise continue to mar the larger and denser cities of the region.
SURPRISE, ARIZONA
Roughly 40 kilometers northwest of Phoenix, Arizona, in the heart of Maricopa County, is the city of Surprise, Arizona. It’s home to 143,000 people spread across 286 square kilometers, with roughly 171 people per square kilometer. To some of you, this might tend towards a higher density ratio than NAAGC would recommend, but Surprise is also illustrative of what a community looks like when it splits the difference between a physically gated approach (i.e., Hot Springs Village) and policy gated approach (i.e., Hickory).
Surprise is not itself physically gated, but is largely an aggregation of various smaller, physically gated communities. This is what NAAGC researchers call a classic example of “cumulative gating,” which addresses both the spatial and psychological impact of cities or regions comprised of multiple gated communities.[13]
While most of the 2,253 kilometers of paved roads in Surprise are public corridors, they were primarily designed for ingress and egress for these private communities, per NAAGC guidance. Non-residents that find themselves on these roads will of course not be able to enter any neighborhoods, feel unwelcome as such, and move onwards to their destinations beyond the boundaries of Surprise.
For this reason, and for the complimentary function of successful gated sub-communities within the broader Surprise geography, Surprise also ranks as one of the safest cities in Arizona.[14] Its sprawling network of cul-de-sacs and self-contained, age-restricted communities serves as a powerful disincentive for unwanted social interactions, with conflicts avoided as such. And as shown in Figure 03, when juxtaposed against the chaotic geography and density of a more “organic” street grid—in London, for example—Surprise also serves as an important example of suburban master planning.[15]
In other words, as one former NAAGC chairman declared: “Master planning is authoritarian vision disguised as democratic good.”[16] Surprise, and its situation within the larger Maricopa area, is thus what NAAGC considers to be authoritarian par excellence.
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
America’s “Sin City” is not what most would consider to be gated—especially because it’s a city with pockets of density fundamentally opposed to NAAGC’s core principles. Nonetheless, our ongoing work in Las Vegas over the past several decades has effectively formed a cogent example of what gating looks like at a massive urban scale.
As architect Robert Venturi famously wrote in Learning From Las Vegas: “The city of signs [Las Vegas] is not a ‘coherent’ organism; it is not a closed, solid unit, nor does it change into something else. It falls to pieces and is subject to change and reorganization.”[17] While Venturi was being poetic with this sentiment, his observation is (and has been) politically true for Las Vegas since its beginning: a city of pieces, subject to change and reorganization. And if it cannot be easily changed architecturally or spatially, it has been reorganized politically, per NAAGC guidance, to function as a domain of interconnected gated communities.
For example, pedestrian walkways in the most desirable parts of the city—especially the world-famous “Strip” (itself divided by a beautiful 16-lane highway)—are heavily policed and surveilled. Pedestrian “freedom,” a leading source of urban conflict, is illusory in Las Vegas, which is why violent crime is nearly nonexistent along this avenue, and organized political protests are almost impossible to organize.
Importantly, Las Vegas is a city without a center. There are still remnants of a downtown district, but the economic engine of the city is contained within its private properties—casinos, hotels, bordellos, and so forth—which are themselves forms of gated communities (insofar as admission is required, security is enforceable, walls and doors are physical, and fees must be paid for usage). Without a center, a city can effectively neuter oppositional political organization. And with extensive gating, like what we have in Las Vegas, any sort of public political organization, of any kind, becomes a non-issue.
Of course, Las Vegas is still notoriously violent, but such violence is typically localized, interpersonal, and unavoidable in urban zones where unwanted social interactions are a constant malady. This is why the excessive sprawl of the Las Vegas exurban areas has been so profuse and so successful, despite the region’s otherwise punishing temperatures, scant access to resources, and inhospitable ecosystem.
Returning in conclusion to the UN’s statement how conflicts are increasingly waged between domestic groups rather than states, the examples I’ve shared here, from NAAGC’s own guidance and practice, illustrate how we can protect our communities from the evolving nature of violent conflict.
While Hot Spring Village, Arkansas stands as the ideal—completely separated from nearby dense environments and fully gated—not every development can reach this same standard. The sprawling cities of Hickory, North Carolina, and Surprise, Arizona are much more emblematic of smart planning compromise; using or accentuating extant government policies and private development practices to form invisible but powerful walls and gates between those communities and the outside world.
And though our work in Las Vegas is still underway, and will be so for many years, we’ve already seen the success of de-conflict in the city by leveraging both extant local policy and emergent surveillance technologies and policing tactics to impose a gated system within a dense urban context.
Of course, Las Vegas has had the good fortune of being wholly designed for private automobiles, which works in our favor. It would be more difficult to implement this vision in a place like Brooklyn, New York, or Chicago, or San Francisco, and so forth—but these are the communities we intentionally avoid as such. They and others like them the source of conflict and revolution. Gating is the antidote.
NOTES:
1. “A New Era of Conflict and Violence.” United Nations. Accessed July 7, 2024. https://www.un.org/en/un75/new-era-conflict-and-violence.
2. “NAAGC 2050 Strategic Plan.” North American Alliance for Gated Communities. Accessed July 7, 2024. https://www.naagc.org/mission/strategicplan2050.pdf.
3. Kusamaygetz, Antoni. “Radical Protections: The Founding Vision of the North American Alliance for Gated Communities.” Journal of Urban History, 32, no. 2 (Spring 2009): 12–42, https://doi.org/10.1086/690235.
4. “NAAGC: Thirteen Founding Principles.” North American Alliance for Gated Communities. Accessed July 7, 2024. https://www.naagc.org/thirteenprinciples1965.
5. Edwards-King, Vera and Jerome G. Yarbok. “Deconflict Through Suburbanization.” Gates: The Official NAAGC Journal, 10.1 (December 2001): 5–23, https://doi.org/11.12888/696655.
6. Purushe, Sunil. “7 Places to Live In The US With The Lowest Crime Rates In 2024.” TheTravel.Com. The Travel, April 2, 2024. https://www.thetravel.com/places-to-live-in-the-us-with-the-lowest-crime-rates/.
7. Rand-King, Maryanne. “Mobile Colonies: Private Transportation for Public Good.” Highway Engineering, 64.7 (December 2012): 298-310, https://doi.org/11.1137/66866901
8. “Measuring Sprawl 2014.” Smart Growth America. Smart Growth America, 2014. Accessed July 9, 2024. https://smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/measuring-sprawl-2014.pdf.
9. “NAAGC: Thirteen Founding Principles.” North American Alliance for Gated Communities. Accessed July 7, 2024. https://www.naagc.org/thirteenprinciples1965.
10. “Vision 2000: City of Hickory Community Plan.” City of Hickory. November 1980. https://www.hickorync.gov/web/archive/1980communityplan.pdf.
11. “10 Charming Main Streets Across the US that You Can’t Miss,” April 18, 2024. https://10best.usatoday.com/awards/travel/best-main-street-2024/.
12. “These are the Safest Cities in North Carolina,” SafeHome.org, May 31, 2024, https://www.safehome.org/safest-cities/nc/.
13. Arpaio, Caitlyn. “Cumulative Gating and Community Compromise.” Sprawl Quarterly, 17, no. 4 (December 1998): 800-824, https//doi.org/180235.1/10891581
14. Areavibes, “Surprise, AZ Crime Rates: Stats & Map,” n.d., https://www.areavibes.com/surprise-az/crime/.
15. Błasik, Magdalena, Tong Wang, and Jan K. Kazak. “The Effectiveness of Master Plans: Case Studies of Biologically Active Areas in Suburban Zones.” Geomatics and Environmental Engineering 16, no. 3 (2022).
16. “Proceedings from the 1991 NAAGC Global Forum.” Gates: The Official NAAGC Journal, 2.1 (January 1992): 5–16, https://doi.org/6/8081345/09571.10157.
17. Venturi, Robert, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour. Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form, 1972. http://designtheory.fiu.edu/readings/venturi_LFLV.pdf.
ben van loon 