The Gate and the Garden

An estate's aesthetics committee spends most of its meetings reading building plans that owners would rather it never saw: a double garage with a flat roof, a boundary wall in raw face brick, a front door painted bright blue. In most security estates those plans must be approved by the home owners' association before they go anywhere near the municipality, and the design guidelines have usually decided the answer before the meeting starts.

Owners who are refused tend to take it as an insult. It is their stand and their money, and the anger is understandable. But the street they liked on the day of the viewing looks settled only because every owner before them accepted the same conditions. The rule that blocks the blue door is the same rule that stopped the house next door from being painted like a car wash.

Take the conditions away and the gate stays while the garden goes. Each owner builds whatever pleases him, and over the years the estate drifts toward an ordinary suburb that still charges estate levies. There is an unfair version too, where guidelines are invented or applied selectively to keep certain people out, and owners usually spot it fast. The fair version asks the same of everyone, committee members included, and writes its reasons down where any buyer can read them.