The Limits to Authority: Developer Interventions and Neighbour Problems on a Master Planned Estate

Abstract

Master planned estates are large suburban developments built by a private sector developer. As part of its pursuit of building ready-made communities, the Developer becomes active in the management of the estate for years after its completion, subsequently finding itself in the difficult position of running, rather than simply building, new communities. In this paper, this challenge facing the Developer is explored with reference to Foucault’s writing on the problematics of governing under liberalism and the question of what is within the competence of the state and what is not. This paper shows how corporate property developers pose themselves similar questions and face the effects of demarcating certain spheres of residential life as not within their domain. The example addressed here is the issue of managing problems between neighbours and the tensions arising from residents’ expectations that this is indeed a matter of development control.

Key words:

• Master-planned estates
• Property developers
• Governance
• Neighbouring
• Governmentality

Notes

1. As outlined later, “large” means the MPE is intended to accommodate 30,000 people once it is complete and function as a suburb rather than neighbourhood sub-unit. This is commonly accepted as large for MPEs (see McGuirk and Dowling 2007).

2. Strata title typically applies to apartment blocks where there is individual and shared ownership of parts of the building (stairwells, walkways etc.) while community title is more commonly applied in contexts where there is shared ownership of land (streets, parks etc.).