ABSTRACT
Over a century ago, Ebenezer Howard gave the Trans-Atlantic world its modern version of utopia, the Garden City. The gated community is simply a hybrid form of this suburban ideal, according to the author of Privatopia, Evan McKenzie. Moreover, the real estate developers of early models such as Letchworth, England, and Radburn, New Jersey, set a precedent by retaining private control over their public space. And for over 50 years, William H. Whyte has given us the archetype of their inhabitants, the ‘organization man’. His postwar study of the new town of Park Forest, Illinois, discovered that these white-collar professionals were members of a new class of nomads. Surprised by the high turnover of residents in this Levittown-like suburb of Chicago, Whyte found that their jobs required them to move from city to city across the country. Finally, urban theorist Reyner Banham declared in 1968, ‘Beverly Hills, too, is a ghetto’. In this suburb of Los Angeles, the price of admission keeps undesirable ‘others’ out without any need for walls. From this perspective, then, neither transnational urbanism nor well-protected preserves of the social elite are new. 1
