Whether or not you like suburbia, the first thing you notice about new suburbs is that they all seem to start with fences.
They don’t, of course. There are years of planning and resource consent hearings, followed by scraping back the topsoil and installing all the roads, pipes and services. Right at the end when it seems all is lost, the earth-moving equipment and trucks disappear, the grass is sown and the fences go up. It is only then that they begin to resemble what we have come to know as suburbia. Fences make them recognisable and, in this state, before all the houses are built, they are like ghost towns in reverse, full of potential and lives about to be lived.
There are those who pooh-pooh suburbia as the haven of the bourgeois and home of mediocrity. However, more than 84% of New Zealanders live this way and its popularity as a lifestyle is only growing. How we got here with suburbia and the fences that divide them is a quirky mix of the industrial revolution and capitalism at its best. It’s an unlikely collision of the rise of the middle class and the repurposing of the agricultural fence.
Suburbia, as a way of urban living, has been around for more than 200 years and has spread like a weed throughout the modern world. In the early 19th century, it was observed that industrial London was made of concentric subcommunities described by writer John Murray as “like onions 50 on a rope”. By its nature, industrialisation demanded large populations that required housing, transport infrastructure, and most importantly, the illusion of escape. The suburban form ticked all the boxes and began to proliferate. The early version of the suburb offered the romantic ideal of getting back to nature, combined with the dollar-making convenience of being near the city. It was a magical combination and a way of living that took off like the sales of a seafront subdivision.
When the idea of suburbia reached the limitless space of the United States, it got a grip on how people lived. After World War II, an unlikely combination of returned servicemen wanting to settle down, easier lending criteria, cheap fuel and the techniques of mass production honed in warfare was set it in motion. The construction firm Levitt & Sons built three large “Levittown” suburbs in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania as test models.
Using the principles of assembly-line mass production, construction proceeded according to 27 easy steps, from pouring a concrete-slab foundation to painting the baby’s room. Trees were planted in the streets every 8.53m. The suburbs were a roaring success, and in their cookie-cutter division of landscape, they kindled a version of the American dream. Levittown went from a potato field to a community of 82,000 people in less than three years.
Levittown provided a blueprint of the suburb that has exported itself around the world. Far from seeing the mistakes of others and avoiding them, New Zealand has taken the idea of the suburb and amplified it, thanks to an excess of space and our love affair with the car. Here, we largely skipped the rapid mass-transit systems that were designed to feed these suburbs. Instead, the oversized houses and the cars needed to get to and from them are reliant on an endless supply of cheap fuel.
The idea of suburban living took off and it was fed by another evolution in the idea of the fence. Our nomadic ancestors roamed the landscape in search of food until the development of the first fences enabled the domestication and enclosure of livestock and the ability to protect crops from foraging wild animals. The idea of enclosed agriculture had other effects, like the incentive to settle in one place, the creation of permanent architecture and the concepts of the fixed community and a trading economy.
Some time during the Middle Ages, the idea of the fence underwent a drastic change in Europe. Traditionally, the land for growing food was communally run, with the fences built to allow crop rotation and to stop the cows from getting into the turnips. As the idea of privatisation gained currency, these same fences went from being an agricultural tool to being the embodiment of boundary, private property and exclusion. This became the defining feature of who got what in society, and it became the model the Western world has followed ever since.
Privacy matters
I have always had a weird fascination with subdivisions in their juvenile state. Before all the builders and their vans turn up, it is the fences that intrigue me. These, like the houses that are eventually built, all look the same: 1.8m palings in treated Pinus radiata. They are orderly, well built and unpainted; they are everywhere. Only when the fence has been built and the property boundary defined will the real estate agents venture onto the newly sown grass in their town shoes to hammer in a “For Sale” sign with a smiling photo of themselves and a phone number. These signs are careful never to mention the price you will have to pay.
The fence is the division bit of subdivision. It turns landscape into property. Without it, there is no ownership and without ownership there is no price. That is the simple poetry of a NZ subdivision. Capitalism loves fences; it thrives on their poetry. Instead of keeping the cows out, the suburban fence has evolved into a tool for marking ownership. If you ask the owners of the suburban 1.8m fences why they have them, they will instantly reply, “for privacy, of course”, and give you a withering look.
My fascination with fences gets the better of me on my way home from work. I take a detour down a newly constructed road that leads into a nest of neat cul-de-sacs. The still-wintry blue light is getting low in the new subdivision. I walk into a vacant section and begin to conduct the fussy business of composing a photograph. I am startled by a voice that comes from directly behind me. “Hello, there … you admiring the view?” says the real estate agent. He is the same one whose face adorns the “For Sale” sign staked in the velvety green grass. He wears a crisp blue blazer and a forced grin.
I boldly lie through my teeth, and reply, “Yes, quite the view.” If it were not for the fence, there would indeed be a fantastic view to the west of the Southern Alps covered in a fresh layer of snow.
It seems I can get away with trespassing, jumping the fence and striking at the heart of suburbia purely because I look like a person who is interested in this piece of fenced-off landscape.
“Property values around here are on the up. You’re getting into the market at the right time,” the agent says with an almost conspiratorial lowered voice.
I do my best to look like a potential customer interested in “leveraging” and “potential” while slowly edging my way back to the street.
