The great divide

As new suburbs continue to mushroom around the country, they are defined by one thing: the fence.

- MATT VANCE

Whether or not you like suburbia, the first thing you notice about new suburbs W 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.