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The Effects of Formal and Informal
Institutions on Residential Land
Management in the Phoenix Metropolitan
Area
An Honor’s Thesis
Jaleila Brumand
Advisor: Dr. Kelli L. Larson
Additional Readers: Dave White and Sharon Hall
Introduction
According to Paul Robbins, chemical usage in residential landscapes rivals toxins
applied at industrial agricultural proportions (2007). Coupled with intense water inputs,
yard management impacts urban sustainability in America and elsewhere. In order to
take steps toward a more sustainable future, we must first understand the underlying
mechanisms that drive landscaping practices—such as water and chemical usage—in
residential settings where people live and interact with their local environments.
Neighborhood factors and social pressures, like conforming to certain status quo
aesthetics, appear to strongly encourage residents to maintain their yards in a certain way
(Nielson and Smith, 2005). Aggressive marketing campaigns from manufacturers of
fertilizers and pesticides have entrenched homeowners in the ‘ideal’ industrial lawn that
dictates the necessity of a hyper-green lawn and a weed-free landscape. According to
these “ideal” landscaping schemes, which are often reinforced by more localized
neighborhood pressures, people apply chemicals and irrigate their yards to satisfy
particular aesthetic desires (Nielson and Smith, 2005).
While socio-ecological research describes many of the impacts associated with
the use of lawn chemicals and other landscaping choices, the effects of social institutions
on yard management decisions are not well documented. In this study, I explore
institutional pressures and constraints on landscaping practices, while considering how
codified restrictions and normative beliefs affect landscaping practices and related
outcomes including ecosystem services. Specifically, I pose and answer the following
questions: Overall, how do institutions influence land management practices across
different residential contexts? At the neighborhood level, how do social norms play
out when formal institutions—specifically Homeowners Associations’ Covenants,
Codes and Restrictions (HOA CCRs)— are or are not present? As formal
institutions, neighborhood covenants or broader legal rules play a role in dictating what
can and cannot be done in the realm of residential landscaping, but are they enforced and
do they reinforce social expectations? In addition, do informal institutions reinforce
HOA restrictions, or do social norms encourage non-conformity to regulations or customs
in some communities?
Employing a place-based, ethnographic approach involving interviews, this study
examines the interplay between formal and informal institutions—that is, codified rules
and regulations versus shared social norms—in three diverse neighborhoods of
metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona. Two are located on the newer fringe of the city and the
other is a historic core neighborhood located in the center of the city. Each of these three
neighborhoods has the potential for social pressures to influence residents’ landscape
management practices, but only two have the added pressure of an HOA that actually has
the legal power to uphold landscaping and other rules. In order to truly understand the
impetus for landscape management decisions, it is necessary to understand the interplay
between these two institutions at the residential scale of neighborhoods.
To analyze the relationship between people and their outdoor landscapes at home,
the ‘cultural capital’ framework is a useful way to approach and understand the complex
dynamics involved with land management and how residents interact with their
surroundings. Cultural capital is broadly defined through three fundamental concepts:
habitus, capital, and fields. In this study, habitus is the main focus. Habitus describes the
way that people form, interact and react to a social system, thereby creating and
reinforcing the status quo of what is customary. Broadly, social systems depict how
people within a particular society interact with legal rules (e.g., formal regulations) and
implicit expectations (e.g., informal institutions), which can play out across spatial scales.
In this thesis, residents’ management of the monoculture lawn is the custom, whereas the
habitus involves the interplay of institutions affecting landscaping practices from the
household level to extending circles on influence in neighborhoods and broader regions.
Capital is the manner in which power is divided across social systems. In this study, land
management, capital manifests in the strength of various institutions that exert influence
on residents’ decisions. Finally, fields are the domain in which individuals act, interact,
and react based on the forces of their habitus and capital. Herein, the fields encompass
residential households and neighborhoods and the broader municipal, regional, and
national landscapes within which people act and interact. Askew and McGuirk (2004)
present the idea of cultural capital to understand residential decision-making in regards to
water use, though this notion is highly applicable to the benefits and detriments of
peoples’ choices concerning other environmental resources. As a whole, understanding
the interplay between all three components—habitus, capital, and fields—is vital for
understanding the influence of social institutions on residential land management.
Joan Nassauer’s notion of cultural sustainability emphasizes the design of
landscapes that are environmentally valuable as well as aesthetically and socially valued
in ways that elicit and maintain peoples’ interests and preferences over time (2009).
According to Nassauer, since natural landscapes tend to be “messier” (e.g., bushier and
thicker), they are often viewed as poorly managed and undesirable even though they are
critical for wildlife and the health of water resources. “Cues of care”—such as mowed or
trimmed edges—are one mechanism to enhance the social acceptability of landscapes,
especially those that are ecologically important but commonly seen as undesirable to
people (such as wetlands) (Nassauer, 2009). The notion of “cues of care” applies to
residential landscapes since neat, manicured lawns are a long-time tradition in the U.S.
and elsewhere.1 Meanwhile, the intensive management of ‘industrial,’ monocultural
lawns has potentially detrimental impacts on the natural environment and human health
(Robbins 2007). I therefore employ cultural sustainability as a mechanism by which to
consider the social desirability of residents’ landscaping choices alongside environmental
implications.
Literature Review and Background
Ecosystem Services: Ecological and Social Benefits of Residential Landscapes
Suburban America is rife with single-family homes and often landscaping that
includes green lawns. In managing their outdoor landscapes, residents make decisions
about what kind of groundcover they desire—grass or otherwise—and how to trim or
maintain vegetation, irrigate plants, and manage pests (Anderson, et al, 2007). These
decisions, in turn, have ramifications for urban sustainability, as they potentially result in
1 Many disciplines and scholars have addressed peoples’ preferred landscape aesthetics
including landscape ecologists (e.g., Nassauer, 2009), as well as environmental
psychologists (e.g., Herzog, 1989; Kaltenborn and Bjerke, 2002), among others. Given
my focus on how institutions affect a variety of landscaping choices, however, a full
review of the literature on landscape aesthetics is beyond the scope of this thesis.
multiple ecosystem services (or disservices). Ecosystem services entail environmental
and social benefits resulting from yard management, and associated landscape conditions
and functions. Disservices entail negative impacts on the benefits provided, or in other
words, detrimental outcomes. Broadly, ecosystem services encompass four distinct
categories—regulating, supporting, provisioning and cultural (Millennium Development
Initiatives, 2010). Cook et al. further specify these four services for residential landscapes
(Figure 1). Regulating services are responsible for maintaining certain processes
necessary for both human and ecological health, such as controlling water flows and
flooding or temperatures and microclimate conditions though vegetative landscapes.
Supporting ecosystem services are the fundamental foundation for all processes on earth
and include soil formation and nutrient cycling, In residential landscapes, monocultural
practices inhibit some of these processes by reducing the biodiversity necessary for
certain ecosystem services. Provisioning services provide humans and other biota with
food, water, wood and other resources like those who harvest fruit from trees in their
yards. Cultural services are more anthropocentric in nature, including aesthetic,
recreational, and spiritual values, along with the sense of place conjured up by landscapes
and this is invoked through the feelings and desires people have for their landscapes. All
four types of ecosystem services may be affected, positively or negatively, by the way
residents manage their yards (Cook et al., 2008).
Ecosystem services operate across scales and in both public and private arenas.
Common areas and parks offer particular public services, as do visible front yards. The
public setting of these landscapes enforce and reinforce social norms and pressures
(Larsen and Harlan 2006; Larson et al. 2009). Formal institutions such as municipal
ordinances also often apply to public settings that other people can see. In contrast,
backyards typically represent private landscapes that offer personal benefits without the
added social pressures from neighbors or the broader public. For this reason, desired
services may differ across front and back yards, or other public vs. private spheres, as
social institutional pressures vary across them.
Figure 1: Human Drivers on Yard Management Decisions and Ecology (Cook et al, 2010)
Note the red boxes highlight the social-ecological relationships examined herein.
In the realm of multiple potential services or disservices derived from a
multifaceted array of possible landscaping choices, residents must grapple with tradeoffs.
For example, while mesic lawns might offer comfortable recreational spaces and cooling
effects, they also often use more water (Larson et al. 2010). Moreover, while mesic lawns
may require more water than their xeric alternatives, which include rock groundcover and
drought-tolerant plants in arid regions, they also appear to demand greater pesticide use.
Decisions to maintain certain plants that provide some provisioning service like
producing fruit may also help foster one or more other type of ecosystem services (e.g. a
supporting service like flowering plants to support pollination as well as fruit). The need
to consider the social-ecological tradeoffs across different landscape choices overall is
vital, especially since lawns may not always be the ecologically detrimental options they
are often portrayed as in recent literature (Robbins, 2001).
Based on this literature review, I expect to find participants partial to aesthetically
pleasing landscaping as defined by Nassauer (e.g.- well-manicured landscapes that show
signs of human care and maintenance). I also expect to find social norms, especially
local neighborhood norms, as a stronger driving force behind management decisions
compared to formal institutions (Nassauer, 2009; Nielson and Smith, 2005).
Institutions and their Role in Landscape Decision-Making
Landscape management decisions are made under a certain configuration of
motivations and constraints. Institutions, in particular, guide peoples’ decisions through
either formal rules or informal pressures (Robbins, 2001). Adger (2003) advocates an
institutional approach stressing how both formal rules and informal institutions play out
and interact across multiple scales in specific contexts. Through such an approach,
research can offer knowledge and insights that can be generalized across cases while
importantly acknowledging the importance of place in determining the particularities of
human-environment interactions and sustainable governance.
Researchers have found that neighborhood norms have a greater effect on
landscaping decisions than more general social norms in a society (Nassauer, 2009).
When given a choice between six landscape types, participants in Nassauer’s study
choose the “ideal” landscape based heavily on the design of nearby neighbors’ yards, as
opposed to national lawn industrial norm. This means that in order to tailor long-term
solutions that will work within the context of the neighborhood, metropolitan landscapes
should use neighborhood scale changes and to do this is it vital to understand how these
neighborhoods view themselves and what they value. This also means that people that
want to be distinguish themselves through landscaping that is uncharacteristic in their
neighborhood such as less water-intensive landscaping in a xeric neighborhood, should
try to get some support from their neighbors and possibly lead to a gradual change in the
rest of the neighborhood.
Formal Institutions: Neighborhood and Municipal Rules
People may conform to a certain standard to stay within the specific legal
boundaries or to please their neighbors. Adger et al. defines formal institutions as
codified rules enforced by law (2003). In the framework of residential landscaping, they
often appear in the form of homeowners’ associations and municipal ordinances. As
Robbins’ notes, “formal institutions include both municipal laws that enforce minimum
standards for lawn care and more extensive codes used in sub-developments and gated
communities dictating the manner and extent of lawn care” (2001).
Formal institutions usually take the form of maximum length standards for grass,
commonly set by municipal health boards or state departments of natural resource or
environmental management to promote or prevent certain outcomes (e.g.- weed
overgrowth or maintain neighborhood aesthetics) and whether cognizant decision or
unintended externality these result in changes in different ecosystem services. Often this
is done to avoid nuisances and pests, at least from historical perspective of keeping
rodents out of neighborhoods by keeping them well-manicured (Robbins, 2001).
Controlled by city governments, municipal ordinances include zoning requirements as
well as other rules dictated by towns. In some places, these have been salient drivers of
landscaping choices, for example, by limiting pesticide use in Canadian towns and
banning irrigation of lawns in suburban Boston (Polsky et al., 2007; Robbins, 2001).
At the neighborhood scale, homeowners’ associations, or HOAs, also have the
authority to enforce Covenants, Codes, and Restrictions that govern local areas (Larson et
al. 2008). These governing bodies can be run by the developer, the residents or jointly
between the two, and they often-present laws that restrict certain actions. The covenants
can include everything from restricting certain paint colors for homes or restricting cars
during certain hours to requiring certain groundcover for residential landscaping
throughout the neighborhood. The main goal of HOAs is to protect property values,
mediate disagreements between homeowners, and generally promote social goods within
the neighborhood. In an earlier, preliminary study of Phoenix-area HOA landscaping
rules, researchers found that yard maintenance (e.g. avoiding encroachment for
maintenance) is most commonly controlled by CCRs, followed by irrigation drainage and
water flows as well as groundcover choices (Larson et al. 2008). It is also important to
note that some HOAs mandate grass and some prohibit it (as participants in the New
Xeric Tracts noted in the results below).
Informal Institutions: Normative Beliefs and Social Expectations
Informal institutions are non-codified social norms and customs that operate
through beliefs and peer pressures, rather than the law or other legally enforceable
policies. They are often more abstract because they require people to interpret cultural
values and ascribe meaning to them and then make decisions based on what they deem
appropriate within their social and cultural frameworks. Informal institutions are often
harder to track than formal rules but are they as common and may, in fact, have a more
profound effect on management practices than codified laws (Adger et al., 2001).
Two general categories of norms include descriptive and injunctive beliefs
(Cialdini, 2007). Descriptive norms represent beliefs about what people do, or in other
words, the patterns of social activities and choices. For example, in the New Xeric Tracts,
groundcover is largely rock and xeric plants whereas in the Historic Mesic there is a
largely verdant aesthetic and the Wealthy Mountain Oasis is a mixture of both rock and
grass landscapes. Injunctive norms go beyond describing what people do in classifying
the desirability or undesirability of specific actions. If water conservation is highly
valued within the context of a community, for example, perhaps high water-use
landscapes might be considered undesirable (Agrawal and Gibson, 1999). The desire for
neat, orderly landscapes—with cues of care—represents one such example of descriptive
norms. Preferences for weed-free, hyper-green landscape aesthetic, which depict a
situation analogous to Robbins’ industrial lawn, are other examples (Nielson and Smith
2005). In short, both descriptive and injunctive norms are at play in this study and
manifest in different ways in all three of the target neighborhoods.
Robbins describes that “positive” norms often center around intensive residential
landscaping practices and are effectively enforced by positive feelings that invoke
feelings of neighborhood cohesion (2001). On the other hand, residents often associate
“negative” norms of non-intensive landscape management, such as allowing the lawn of
other greenery to overgrow, become brown, or become overrun with weeds, with
practices of neglect (Robbins, 2001). In a study involving a national survey, Robbins
states that many of his participants “associated poor relative lawn care with poor
character and emphasized the obligation that homeowners have to their neighbors,
especially if the value of their neighbors’ house is relatively high” (2001).
Informal institutions, or de facto norms, are not codified in law but are followed
because there is an implicit social obligation or an expectation to conform (Adger et al.,
2003). Within social norms, both positive and negative norms reinforce community
values. There are various possible reference groups that residents might ascribe to based
on what their neighbors think, what their family or friends do or expect, what landscaping
professionals tell them, what the lawn-care industry promotes as well as other pressures.
Researchers have found that neighborhood norms have a greater effect on landscaping
decisions than more general social norms in a society (Nassauer, 2009). When given a
choice between six landscape types, participants in Nassauer’s study choose the “ideal”
landscape based heavily on the design of nearby neighbors’ yards, as opposed to national
lawn industrial norm. This means that in order to tailor long-term solutions that will work
within a given social context, landscaping practices should consider neighborhood-scale
dynamics including norms. To do this, we must understand how neighbors view their
neighborhoods and what they value locally. This also means that people that want to be
distinguish themselves through landscaping that is uncharacteristic in their neighborhood,
such as less water-intensive landscaping in a xeric neighborhood, should try to garner
some support from their neighbors, which could possibly lead to a gradual change in the
rest of the neighborhood.
Overall, it is important to note that norms may vary across distinctive social and
environmental contexts. While Nassauer (2009) found that local neighborhood dynamics
trump broader trends, Larson et al. also stress the importance of social-spatial context for
landscaping practices (2010). Therefore, the findings of particular studies and those
across studies must be considered relative to the environments where they were
conducted.
Interview Methods
This research is set within the broader context of a long-term, urban ecological
study that aims to understand the social and ecological causes, consequences, and
feedbacks associated with residential landscaping practices (see Figure 1). While the
larger study is a collaborative effort with three other locations across the United States
(including Miami, Baltimore, and Boston areas), my analysis focuses on the influence of
varying institutions on landscaping practices in three Phoenix neighborhoods (Figure 2)
through the use of ethnographic interview techniques.
Figure 1. Overview of Neighborhood Layout
Historic Mesic Palms Wealthy Mountain Oasis
New Xeric Tracts
The case study neighborhoods (see Figure 2 and Table 2 in Appendix A) were
chosen because of their location and varied institutions across them, including an older,
downtown neighborhood—the Historic Mesic Palms—and two fringe neighborhoods
located around the edge of the City of Phoenix—New Xeric Tracts and Wealthy
Mountain Oasis. Wealthy Mountain cul-de-sacs and the New Tracts neighborhood have
HOAs while the Historic District does not. The Historic District has a neighborhood
association but no HOA while both the New Xeric Tracts and Wealthy Mountain Oasis
were governed by HOAs.
Figure 2. Overview of Dominant Groundcover for each participant in three study
neighborhoods
Historic Mesic District
Informant Front Yard Back Yard
151b Mesic lawn (all) Xeric Rock (mostly)
178b Xeric Rock (all) Xeric Rock (all)
179b Mesic lawn (mostly) Mesic lawn (all)
186b Mesic lawn (mostly) Mesic lawn (mostly)
Wealthy Mountain Oasis
Informant Front Yard Back Yard
391d Mixed Oasis Mixed Oasis (w/ pool)
451d Mixed Oasis Xeric Rock (mostly)
462d Xeric Rock (mostly) Xeric Rock (w/ pool)
463d Mesic lawn (mostly) Mixed Oasis (w/ pool)
New Xeric Tracts
Informant Front Yard Back Yard
253c Xeric Rock (all) Mixed Oasis
262c Xeric Rock (all) Xeric Rock (all)
300c Xeric Rock (mostly) Xeric Rock (mostly)
331c Xeric Rock (all) Mixed Oasis (w/ pool)
Following a purposeful, stratified sampling approach, interview participants from
each neighborhood were selected to represent a diversity of yard types and chemical-use
patterns as well as demographic characteristics, as found through a prior household
survey conducted on landscape management in 2008. We drew our interview participants
based on both multiple choice and short written response questions about self-reported
landscaping characteristics and management practices, along with related attributes of
residents and their households. At the end of the survey, respondents were asked to
indicate if they might be willing to meet with us in the future for an interview. In winter
2010 to spring 2011, we contacted participants from those who said “yes” or “maybe” to
that question for the follow-up interviews. After classifying potential informants based on
their survey responses, we selected and contacted participants with varying groundcover
types (grass, rock, or mixed) and intensity of chemical usage (none to several types used)
in order to represent a variety of landscaping behaviors. For each of the three
neighborhoods, participants were first chosen for a diversity of groundcover types and
chemical use in order to satisfy the range in each neighborhood. After these two desired
traits were satisfied, we then considered income levels, political ideology, gender and
ethnicities to present a more balanced understanding of the driving forces behind
management practices and their varied effects on people of different demographics.
Potential participants were contacted through e-mail and by phone, depending on
the information they provided in the previous survey as well as additional information we
could find using phone number database. Some participants in the Wealthy Mountain cul-
de-sacs neighborhood were also contacted by field visits to households due to a lack of
responses through the other two media. The script for e-mails and phone calls as well as
the letter left for homeowners was screened and approved by Arizona State University’s
Institutional Review Board. Each participant had to be at least 18 years old and a
homeowner in order to be involved in the study.2
The interview protocol (Appendix B) employed a semi-structured format and
included questions to examine the drivers and expectations underlying landscaping
preferences and practices, along with questions about the informal expectations and
formal rules that influence people to maintain a certain landscape type. The semi-
structured interview protocol was worded such that some questions were set while others
offered some flexibility in probing—when needed— to get participants to explain their
practices in their own words. Since this study is part of a larger Central Arizona Phoenix
Long Term Ecological Research (CAP LTER) project, the protocol incorporated multiple
themes to support a holistic understanding of landscape management and the different
driving factors and outcomes (e.g., sense of place) in different areas of the country.
Overall, the protocol included general questions about management practices like
pesticide and herbicide application, as well as more institutionally based questions to
gauge the effects of different social and place-based factors on landscaping practices.
Another undergraduate student and I conducted interviews at the participants’
household. After each interview, a walkthrough tour of both the front and back yards was
conducted. We also took pictures of the landscaping in the front and back yards, and the
2 For a more detailed understanding of the systematic purposeful sampling design of the
study, contact Jaleila Brumand or Dr. Kelli Larson.
10
entire interview was digitally voice recorded and transcribed for further analysis.
Transcripts were analyzed both deductively and inductively for themes. First, following
from a review of literature on environmental decision-making and institutions, I reviewed
transcripts to gauge all the ways in which residents invoked institutions: norms, HOA
rules, etc. (see Appendix C for coding outline). Then, I looked for common themes and
notable differences across transcripts from each neighborhood, focusing on the
homeowners’ evocations of formal and informal institutions in areas with and without
HOAs. Finally, the research team corroborated to enhance current understanding about
ecological decision-making by relating patterns and themes in the interviews to broader
theories and ideas in published research. After describing the two case study
neighborhoods, I present our results for our two-part research question.
Results and Discussion: The Influence of Formal and Informal Institutions on
Landscaping Choices
In this section, I seek to answer the first of two main research questions across
neighborhoods; in particular: How do various types of institutions influence land
management practices in different residential contexts? Across neighborhoods, informal
institutions were a more salient factor in land management decisions, which will be
demonstrated in this section (Figure 1 below gives a general breakdown of informants’
comments on the effects of institutions on their land management practices).
Table 1. Summary of Findings: The Number and Nature of Informants’ Comments on How Institutions Affect their Landscaping
Practices
The table below includes a breakdown of general themes from each neighborhood about how informants presented thoughts about pressures for
landscaping in their neighborhoods.
Institutions Historic Mesic District
(no HOA)
Wealthy Mountain Oasis
(HOA CCRs)
New Xeric Tracts
(HOA CCRs**)
Formal
Homeowner
Associations
0 informants 1 informant 1 informant
- Not bound by an HOA
- HOA mostly specifies housing details,
not landscaping
- Some restrictions & citations for
overgrown plants; 1 received warning
- 1 informant said HOA influences
landscaping by monitoring weeds, but
on irregular basis
- Not much enforcement of code
Municipal Ordinances 2 informants 0 informants 1 informant
- Historic overlay district; mostly
deals with housing but also palms -
City maintains palm trees
- Weed ordinances, but lack of
awareness about details
- Spray for mosquitoes
- Compared to Tucson water policies,
which are more conservation-oriented
- The city on rare occasions removes
plant litter in common areas
Informal
Household
Expectations
4 informants 4 informants 3 informants
- Yard nice for leisure
- Kid-friendly cover (grass)
- Spousal pressures & negotiations
- Outdoor living- TVs, BBQ pits, etc.
- Like desert plants
- Want to conserve water
Neighborhood Norms
& Traditions
4 informants 2 informants 2 informants
- Landscaping should respect the
city park aesthetic (lush)
- Internal pressure to conform to
verdant, historic landscaping
- Well-maintained, mixed landscapes
encouraged through descriptive means
- Values water conservation
- Landscaping should be neat
regardless of groundcover
Broader Regional
Customs
4 informants 2 informants 1 informant
- Transplants of greener areas of
the country
-Maintain lush historic legacy of
neighborhood
- Match landscaping to hometown -Tucson has a stronger water ethic
Formal Institutions
Neighborhood Ordinances and Homeowners’ Associations
Homeowners’ Associations are not strong influence for yard management, and people
have varying views of them. Although HOAs specify certain things, they do not appear to
enforce these rules as stringently as they could. Generally, we found that HOAs do not
appear to be a homogenizing force as Robbins (2010) suggests, since residents in the both
Wealthy Mountain Oasis and New Xeric Tracts were largely unaware of their actual
HOA CCRs and did not stress HOA rules as an impetus for their landscaping decisions.
When asked directly about HOA rules on landscaping, no participants knew exactly what
they stipulate. In fact, only one resident directly mentioned an HOA citation as a driving
force behind management practices. In particular, she said:
“We’ve been cited once because our trees got too overgrown and they told
us that we needed to cut them and if we didn’t, we’d get penalized, which
upset me a little bit because we’re very conscientious about taking care of
our yard so when we get cited it’s offensive, I guess.” (462d)*
Residents under the governance of an HOA felt these organizations were generally
useful and described HOAs as follows:
“I think sometimes to justify things [HOAs] go overboard, but I think the
purpose of them is a good idea.” (331c)
“I think [the HOA is] conscientious. I think they’re trying to do a good job
and I think they have everyone’s interest in mind.” (462d)
However, residents of the Historic Mesic District (without an HOA) also
commented on the purpose and implications of HOAs, stressing the notion
embodied in Robbins’ description of HOAs as homogenizing forces (2010).
“[HOAs] are inventions of the devil. You know. I have a friend who lives
in one of those and every house looks exactly the same, every yard looks
exactly the same and, um, how sad, how truly, truly sad.” (179b)
Although the Historic Mesic District does not have an HOA that can
impose and enforce codified rules about landscaping, they do have a
neighborhood association and a historic preservation association. Both of the
voluntary organizations are run by a group of homeowners within the
neighborhood. The neighborhood association works to promote safety in the area
through a watch program and generally facilitates communication with the larger
city. “The Encanto Palmcroft Historic Preservation Association is a non-profit
neighborhood association that elects a representative board, holds regularly
scheduled public meetings, advocates historic preservation, and raises money
primarily through its biennial home tour to fund community activities, charitable
purposes, neighborhood events” (Encanto, 2010).
* All quotes are followed by a unique ID (identifying specific participant) and letter that
denotes neighborhood (b- Historic Mesic District; c- New Xeric Tracts; d- Wealthy
Mountain District)
13
The historic preservation association also requires that all residents submit
intent to modify structural changes to the homes within the neighborhood. This
rule stems from the associations’ desire to maintain the neighborhood’s original
historical layout and architectural style. The proximity of the neighborhood to the
local park with the same namesake “represents an approach to suburban planning
that had its roots in 18th century England.” This aesthetic flourished in America
as the ‘City Beautiful’ movement and evolved in Phoenix as a highly successful
achievement, which “provides a coherent image of this romantic approach to
planning and architecture” (Encanto, 2010). The city beautiful movement in the
United States emphasized the importance of lush greenery, emulating England’s
abundant garden aesthetic and became particularly important in Phoenix as a
respite from the hot, dry desert (Martin et al, 2003).
Neither neighborhood organization in the Historic Mesic area has the
power to create or enforce binding landscaping rules. However, rhetoric among
both of these neighborhood organizations encourages historic preservation of the
area, including the lush nature of the landscaping. Below is the historic
preservation association’s claim about the neighborhood as well a resident’s
statement emphasizing the role of the historic preservation association.
"...Well kept seas of grass and trees lie just beyond a curving line of 80
year old Mexican Fan Palms and just beyond the lawns lie some of the
most beautiful and spacious historic homes in Phoenix..." (Encanto, 2010).
“[The preservation association] is concerned about making sure that the
neighborhood stays cohesive and is recognized by the city.” (179b)
The second statement invokes a particularly interesting paradox. While some
residents from the Historic Mesic District eschew HOAs for their homogeneity,
their “cohesive” neighborhood seems more homogeneous terms of landscaping
choices (Figure 2) and a commonly shared desire to maintain the historic
aesthetic. While this statement, makes a general assertion about the importance of
the overall character of the neighborhood, participants specifically mentioned
tasks that the association and historical society actively manage.
“We have a historic association that takes care of the community garden
and plants flowers.” (151b)
“[The historic society] only [has] control over one thing, it’s the exterior
of the building. They have no control over the interior of the building and
they don’t have any control over anything that is exterior to the outside of
the building.” (186b)
Although the local neighborhood organizations do not have control or
authority over residential landscaping decisions, the Historic Mesic area lies
within a formal overlay district that stipulates the nature of shared landscaping,
namely the palm medians that line the street. Along with such neighborhood-
based municipal rules, other citywide and regional rules (potentially) affect
residential landscaping practices.
City-Level and Broader Rules
14
Municipal ordinances were largely discussed in terms of general programs or
comparisons with other cities, but most participants were unaware of any city regulations
directly affecting their own yard management. For this reason, most participants did not
include them in their explanations of their landscaping practices except when explicitly
asked.
As discussed above, the historic overlay district in the Historic Mesic
District is one of several neighborhood-specific City of Phoenix designations.
City ordinances specific to the study neighborhood specify that palm trees cannot
be cut in what is considered the public right-of-way between the sidewalk and the
street. When asked, residents referred only to the historical society’s general
importance to the neighborhood and did not mention overlay district and only
mentioned the effects of palm ordinances very broadly as indicated in the
following section. For example, one informant stated:
“[The city] would come in every year and take care of all of the palm trees
here in Encanto, but the budget cuts just killed it so now every homeowner
takes care of that.” (186b).
Thus, although City of Phoenix ordinances seek to maintain common historic
features in the Mesic District, current budget limits erode the ability of the
municipality to manage these landscapes and possibly other features of yards
throughout their jurisdiction.
The City of Phoenix also governs neighborhoods broadly in its jurisdiction
(including all three study areas) through other municipal codes that require residents to
maintain a certain level of landscaping safety, like preventing weeds or grass from
growing to a certain level in order to prevent fire and hazards (City of Phoenix, 2009).
Only one resident interviewed, however, actually referenced weed-related City
ordinances:
“There’s only so much the city will come out and do for our
neighborhood. Certain [landscaping] practices can be against code like
when people’s weeds get too high and become a fire hazard, but there’s a
lot of gray area still.” (331c)
Although this resident seems aware of rules specified by the City of Phoenix
concerning weeds, he was unsure of how they actually draw the line for particular
offenses like “weeds”—that is, for example, whether the requirement specifies
lengths, spread, etc. Furthermore, no resident was cited by the city regardless of
the ordinances ‘on the books’ concerning mowing, weeds or other landscaping
practices. According to the City’s website and corroborated by a phone call to a
city representative, very specific rules aim to keep landscaping maintained
primarily for safety reasons.
“Weeds and grass must not exceed 6 inches in height. All streets, alleys
and sidewalks adjacent to the property must be maintained free of over
height or dry vegetation” (City of Phoenix, 2009).
“It is unlawful for any person to allow trees, shrubs or bushes growing on
their property to interfere with traffic signs or signals, or with the passage
15
of pedestrians, bicyclists, vehicles, or flow of drainage water on any public
right-of-way or easement” (City of Phoenix, 2009).
According to city officials, most citations occur in response to complaints
by neighbors, and recently these are often for foreclosed properties. But the city
also sends out some groups to check for overgrowth and other landscaping
violations, especially in areas identified with high foreclosure rates. When asked,
moreover, city officials said they usually received complaints about public lands
like parks, rather than private residences in neighborhoods.
Similar to the City maintaining palm trees in the Historic District, some
residents elicited management practices directly undertaken by local government
entities For instance:
“I’m next to water at the Encanto Park, there were a lot of mosquitoes…
The county… sprays the air with their little trucks against the
mosquitoes… and I think that’s what’s making me sick.” (178b)
In short, local government rules and actions mostly focus on managing nuisances
(e.g., pests, weeds), which may actually trigger other nuisances for some (e.g.,
spraying of pesticides). Such institutions may otherwise limit particular types of
landscapes, such as tall grasses or other plants that are not maintained according
to ordinances.
The city also prohibits certain kinds of olive trees and mulberry trees due
to pollen allergy concerns. Although the City protects certain plants (such as
Palms in the Historic Mesic neighborhood) through overlay districts in some
areas, they also encourage residents throughout Phoenix to plant low water-use
landscaping that “reflects and enhances the image of the Sonoran Desert” (City of
Phoenix, 2009).
While none of the residents interviewed commented about city ordinances
pertaining to water use or conservation in Phoenix, one person noted a lack of
attention to such matters in Phoenix compared to nearby Tucson.
“Tucson is a much more water conscious city than Phoenix. We need to
get better about water management [in Phoenix]… but there is room in a
water conscious world for a little bit of green space.” (151b)
This resident grew up in Tucson, and when he moved to Phoenix, he was
surprised to see what he considered to be a less structured water management
system. However, he still noted that these practices can be in place without
sacrificing all of the greenery in the area.
While Phoenix may not ban or regulate water use, the City does have a
codified ordinance that prohibits residents from allowing water to run off into the
street while watering their yards. This ‘wasteful water’ ordinance doesn’t seem to
be highly enforced as residents did not mention them, and when asked, city
officials did not mention citations except for gross water discharges (like those
related to larger business scale water discharges) or complaints from other
residents. The city official did cite that draining pools into street sewer systems
16
was against code, but again, only enforced when residents diligently report such
instances.
Relative to other areas in the nation that have water bans or specifications
(e.g., different houses can water on certain days only), as in humid towns in
Florida and Massachusetts, arid Phoenix does not have any water use bans or
other types of restrictions on irrigation through formal powers. The lack of
irrigation restrictions in Phoenix partly reflects long-standing traditions in the
region, which have promoted the area as an “oasis” in which “the desert is a
myth” (Larson et al. 2009). Such promotions of informal visioning of the
regional landscape may establish and reinforce historic traditions and social norm,
as discussed in the section that follows.
Informal Institutions
Informal institutions stem from interactions with many different social
groups. In this section, I address the question about how norms, customs and
traditions affect landscaping practices from the personal, household and
neighborhood scales to broader regional and social influences.
Personal Norms, Household Dynamics and Social Norms:
Individuals’ normative beliefs are central to shaping personal preferences
and ideals. All informants in the case study neighborhoods referenced landscaping
ideals and expectations, whether their own or from other members of their family.
Leisure and aesthetics were two important facets to maintaining a desirable yard,
as illustrated below.
“I really like the look of desert plants. I think desert flowers really make
everything pop when they’re in bloom, but they aren’t in bloom very
often. I still think it’s worth it though.” (262c).
“I think a nice green yard with some place to walk, a little bit of open
space is ideal. I want to be able to go outside and read or play with the dog
and I think a lawn is the best for that.” (451d)
“I want my kids to be able play out in the yard, but when you put out
cactus, playing ball is much harder. You know, cactuses tend to pop the
balls.” (186b)
“My wife really likes flowers, which is why we have a bunch of pots
around the front and back of the house. It’s what she does for fun. She
really likes flowers.” (331c)
While family members helped shape decision-making within the
household, landscaping preferences and expectations were not always consistent.
One resident mentioned that he maintained a ficus tree only for his wife.
“We have a tree in the backyard, a ficus tree, and I hate it. It’s ugly and
it’s messy. I only keep it because my wife likes it. I guess I’m kind of
stuck that way.” (462d)
17
Although personal desires and familial pressures contribute to land management
and maintenance practices, residents also act under a set of constraints and do not
fully “choose” their own landscapes. Most of the constraints explicitly mentioned
in the interviews were budgetary.
“I would like to change my landscaping to include more green stuff, but
my vision is pretty expensive… I wanted the house because of location
more than the landscaping so I had to settle.” (451d)
“I’m lucky, I can spend 300 dollars a month on watering my lawn and
plants, but I know that’s not true for everyone. There is a landscape for
every budget.” (186b)
“My wife and I would like to use native desert plants, but it costs so much
to change over. We just don’t have enough money to do that.” (151b)
Broader social pressures beyond households were also cited as reasons for
yard management practices. These pressures were largely invoked through
injunctive norms, especially for well-kept yards. While I expected social pressures
to manifest in the form of dominant groundcover types labeled as positive or
negative within the context of the neighborhood, the social norms in
neighborhoods were depicted more generally as a desire for a well-managed,
manicured landscape.
“There is an expectation [for yards] to be clean, neat, trimmed… in terms
of [landscaping]: they shouldn’t have dead plants out there. They
shouldn’t have trash out there. They shouldn’t have, you know, that kind
of thing.” (451d)
“People don’t have to be totally into [their landscaping] and spend a lot of
money. Just groom it. Make it look halfway appropriate.” (331c)
In sum, many residents were more concerned about neatness and yard
maintenance than specific groundcover types. Of the nine residents who
emphasized well-manicured yards, only two mentioned a particular kind of
groundcover that they preferred while the remaining six were only concerned
about keeping landscaping well-trimmed and the ground free of leaf-litter.
Therefore, Nassauer’s norms of neatness were the main driving injunctive force
found across neighborhoods. However, familial pressures are also important and
understanding norms at the neighborhood-scale presents a fuller picture of how
norms play out for residents and their landscaping practices.
Neighborhood Pressures and Expectations:
Each neighborhood had a largely similar pattern of landscaping (Figure 2
above). However, some residents’ views differed in ways that deviated from the
neighborhood norm. For example, residents in the New Xeric Tract and Wealthy
Mountain Oasis neighborhoods expressed internalized pressure for changes in
front yard landscaping because of neighborhood trends.
18
“I only felt pressure to change my yard when I saw the others on my street
remodeling their houses. Some of them took out some of their grass and
added some masonry, but I haven’t done anything yet.” (463d)
“We’ve never really had much grass in this neighborhood since I’ve been
here, but it does seem like there are some people adding more rock
features and patios around. I’m not really into that and there hasn’t been
any direct pressure though… I have no plans to change my yard.” (262c)
“My wife and I would like to use native desert plants, but it costs so much
to change over. We just don’t have enough money to do that.” (151b)
Only residents in the Historic Mesic District expressed that they felt pressure to
conform to the dominant mesic lawns or articulated disdain for those who did not
conform to the overall verdant character of the landscaping in the neighborhood.
One interviewee in the Historic Mesic neighborhood—whose xeric landscaping
does not match the dominant local trend—felt extreme, implicit pressure to
maintain her yard a certain way. Her neighbor approached one of her friends, but
never mentioned it to her directly.
“I know [neighbor’s name] really hates that I have this kind of [xeric]
landscaping. She’s never actually said anything to me, but she talked to
my girlfriend once in passing.” (178b)
All informants in the Historic Mesic District invoked the importance of
their historic legacy as important to the lawn-dominated character of the area.
Many cited the history behind the development of this particular area of
Downtown Phoenix, unlike those in the new neighborhoods. Residents’ desire to
maintain this pride through their verdant aesthetic lends itself to residents being
depicted negatively as “rebels,” as detailed by the interviewee above and further
reinforced by comments such as:
“[The lush landscaping] is all original to the houses. These are all historic
properties so that’s a commitment you make when you move into a
historic neighborhood. You… don’t move here unless you appreciate
where you’re moving.” (179b)
“We are in a city park environment and so I think that if you stay and
respect the fact that it’s a city park that’s the natural environment here. If
you respect that that’s what you’re going to have in your yard.” (186b)
As a whole, residents seem to fit in with the local ‘natural environment’—
whether socially constructed as urban parks with lush landscaping or desert
preserves with xeric and/or native plants—in the various neighborhoods. The
Historic Mesic District conforms to the former, while the New Xeric Tracts
maintains pride for xeric desert landscaping. Generally, though, both formal and
informal institutions stress neatness with an overall ‘live and let live’ mentality
about groundcover choice. Place-based identities and customs extend beyond
neighborhood forces and had a broader effect on landscaping as well.
Place Identities and Broader Regional Influences:
19
Broader socialization patterns outside of the household were a salient
driving force behind management practices. Residents whose family traditions or
upbringing held fond memories of certain types of landscaping incorporated some
of these customs into their management practices. Some lush landscaping (and
high water demands) stem from informants who claim wanting to bring a little
piece of home (i.e., from the Midwest or their original place of residence) with
them to the desert. Some residents who grew up in lush areas of the country like
Wisconsin felt disconnected from the desert landscaping or simply did not like the
look of the “brown desert” (451d) everywhere, and so they tried to re-create what
they were used to as a child or in their prior state of residence.3
“I grew up in Virginia and I had a very green yard. It took about three
hours to mow. When I moved out to Phoenix, I wanted to keep that. I
really like the look of grass.” (179b)
“[Residents] tend to try and do a Midwestern thing, which has some
greenery in it to mow and then some shrubs and trees and stuff like that.
Those people who are natives, probably less so. But I think the Midwest
influence has made a yard [with a lawn and greenery] kind of more of the
ideal.” (186b)
Some of those who did try to re-create that atmosphere discussed their
frustration with the difficulty maintaining a grassy yard in the Arizona climate.
“I think that the reason [maintaining a lawn] is so difficult and so
expensive is because you’re trying to do something that nature just says
no, this isn’t really what we should be doing here.” (391d)
The statements above depict complex interactions between localized social
pressures and those previously learned in other places or social contexts.
These pressures represent a legacy effect that reinforces a certain ideal as the
status quo through social learning or personal experiences, which are often
connected to particular places. Below these formal and informal relationships are
explored through a more neighborhood specific context.
Results: Institutions at Play in Phoenix Neighborhoods
All three study neighborhood have a complex system of institutional factors that
influence decision-making. In this section, I will further explain institutional and
landscaping dynamics of each neighborhood in order to answer the second question: How
do social norms play out when formal institutions—specifically Homeowners
Associations’ Covenants, Codes and Restrictions (HOA CCRs)—are present or not
locally? (Refer to Figure 1 for number of informants that mentioned specific institutions)
The Historic Mesic District Neighborhood: Historically Green
The first study neighborhood, an upper-middle income neighborhood called the
Historic Mesic District, currently maintains its lush aesthetic—with expansive turf grass
3 However, this trend does not hold up broadly (Yabiku et al. 2004, Larson et al. 2009;
Martin, 2003) and will be explored more fully in the conclusion section of this paper.
20
and abundant palms trees—through historic customs that are partially preserved by
overlay districts and informal neighborhood groups. However, no formal HOA governs
the area, in which interview participants generally expressed pressure from their
neighbors as the driving force in maintaining the verdant lawn character of the
neighborhood. Yet these pressures appear to be implicit. One resident expressed feelings
about being an “outcast” or “rebel” in the neighborhood because of her management
decision to maintain a largely xeric yard with rock groundcover, even though she and
other participants in the area did not mention any direct communication or explicit
pressures about maintaining a lawn (as mentioned above).
Figure 3. Photos of Historic Mesic District Neighborhood
Another participant mentioned that he only planted a winter lawn to match the
character of the neighborhood because he was thinking of selling his home.
“We did a winter lawn this year. It’s the first time we’ve done a winter lawn in
several years [but this year we are trying to sell our house]… that was [originally]
the pattern in the neighborhood in the mid 80s is everybody did a winter lawn. It
hasn’t changed a whole lot, haven’t done any major remodeling in the
landscaping (151b).”
The Historic Mesic District’s lush, green lawn and palm aesthetic is largely
reinforced through social norms and a legacy of established customs that has led to
reinforcing the historical character of the neighborhood. This driver, depicted in Figure 1,
demonstrates that feedbacks affect management practices through previous landscaping
decisions and development patterns as well as historic land use/cover decisions. The area
that is now the Historic Mesic District neighborhood was once a citrus farm that
employed flood irrigation technology to maintain the farm. This infrastructure was left
intact when the neighborhood was built and many residents still have and use this
technology as a means to maintain their landscapes. Overall, historic land and water use
decisions, along with reinforcing social norms today, work to maintain the lush lawns and
palms in this neighborhood.
More generally, participants did not express a neighborhood requirement for
others to change their habits in order to conform, though one participant mentioned that
some neighbors did gossip if the yard became particularly messy (overgrown with weeds,
etc.), and two others were quick to point out archetype yards for preferred aesthetics
21
versus those lacking beauty. In sum, internalized norms and some exerted pressures
characterize the local norms in this area, where residents seem more heavily influenced
by upholding descriptive perceptions of historic traditions than injunctive disdain about
cover choices from others.
The Wealthy Mountain Oasis: HOA and Social Interplay
The second study area, the Wealthy Mountain Oasis neighborhood, includes an
affluent demographic governed by three distinct HOAs. Landscaping in the area is
typically a mix of xeric rock with some grassy patches. Many residents also have pools in
their backyards. None of the HOAs allow for completely bare desert in the front yards,
and all have stipulations about well-trimmed landscaping regardless of groundcover type.
However, the interviewees were largely unaware of these regulations as mentioned above
for all neighborhoods. The quotes below are specific to the Wealthy Mountain Oasis.
“I don’t think there’s an expectation for desert landscaping or grass or for
you have palm trees or not… [Nothing] beyond just neat, trim, and well
maintained.” (391d)
“[Landscaping] needs to be appealing and kept up. If it isn’t they’re going
to report it to the association.” (462d)
Figure 4. Photos of Wealthy Mountain Oasis Neighborhood
Three participants, who also explained their use of landscaping companies to keep
their yard well trimmed and cleared of leaf litter, stressed expectations for neatness. Just
as in the Historic Mesic District, participants in the Mountain Oasis neighborhood
reinforced conformity to descriptive norms as a driving force for management and for
hiring landscaping services. It is also important to note that one participant in the
Mountain Oasis neighborhood also communicated his injunctive disdain of his neighbor’s
naturalistic yard. He was especially surprised that his neighbor—who owns a landscaping
business—would manage his yard in such a “messy” way.
No participants in this neighborhood directly made negative statements about
their own HOA or HOAs in general. One homeowner was upset about receiving a
citation for parking on the street, but acknowledged the importance to the “overall good
of the neighborhood.” The Wealthy Mountain cul-de-sacs HOAs were otherwise
generally portrayed as housekeeping organizations that had the responsibility to maintain
22
property values and general curb appeal by maintaining shared grounds, enforcing
parking rules, and preventing dramatic lot changes.
“I think [the HOA] protects you and it protects the neighborhood. Even
like painting your house, you have to have certain colors and I know that
there was a man in the neighborhood that wanted to paint his house pink
and the association wouldn’t let him do that. I think that would have been
an eyesore in the neighborhood and so I think it’s for the good of the
community”. (462d)
“ [The HOA has] rules against... you know, you can’t have a basketball
court here. If you leave your trash can out two days in a row they actually
have people that go around and patrol. Some of it makes sense just
because of the fact that the value of the housing is important.” (463d)
As mentioned earlier, only one participant mentioned an HOA citation—for an
overgrown tree—as a driving force in management decisions. While the neighbors
interviewed in this area were aware of the dominant landscape pattern locally—that is,
xeric rock cover or mixed ‘oasis’ yards with both rock and grass—they did not express
any pressure to follow certain groundcover types, nor do residents’ ongoing landscaping
practices seem especially influenced by HOA rules.
In this neighborhood, residents expressed a profound sense of difference between
the living spaces of the front and backyards, where the front yards were maintained to
“keep up property values” and the backyards were important for “livability.” The biggest
social factor that influenced groundcover type beyond the belief about neatness and
differentiated living spaces, though, came from another legacy effect. Unlike the legacies
of historic customs we see in the Historic Mesic District, however, some residents of this
neighborhood tried to mimic their homes in more lush areas of the country, since three of
them have moved to Phoenix as adults. The oasis character of the neighborhood was not
borne out of a desire to maintain the area in its historic glory, but rather to bring a bit of
the Midwest to Arizona to make it feel like a friendlier and more familiar to their
previous home and lifestyle.
“I love the blooming trees with blooming flowers and stuff. We used to
have lots of flowering things in Minnesota. It’s harder here.” (462d)
“Well I grew up in the Midwest and everybody just did their own yard
stuff there. It was so much easier. I mean, things just grow. It’s not an
unnatural act like here. Having grass in Arizona is not a natural act, that’s
for sure. But we’ve always... Pretty much every house we’ve ever had has
had grass. It’s just a Midwest thing, I think.” (391d)
In conclusion, the HOA did not appear to be a primary influence considered by
residents in the landscaping practices in the Wealthy Mountain neighborhood. Since
many people in the Wealthy Mountain cul-de-sacs used landscaping professionals (all of
the interviewees in our sample as well as other neighbors mentioned in the interviews) to
maintain their yard, this may be a more critical influence on landscaping and groundcover
types. The social pressure to maintain a neat yard—along with desire to bring a bit of
charm from ‘home’ areas of the United States—truly shaped the character of this
neighborhood and residents’ management practices.
23
The New Xeric Tracts: Water Conserving Maintenance
The final study neighborhood, the New Xeric Tracts, is a primarily middle-
income neighborhood with generally xeric rock cover landscaping. The neighborhood
spans two independent homeowners associations, both of which have “well-trimmed
landscapes” codified in their rules. The HOAs also encourage xeric landscapes but do
not require it. Participants in this neighborhood were unique because they did not have a
distinct or consistent sense of the responsibilities of the HOA. One resident falsely
believed that his HOA had been disbanded, but this may simply be attributed to a lack of
funding and reduced activities among the association.
“We had [an HOA] in the very beginning, but after about four years, we
shut it down, after the developer left and they did nothing…” (253c)
Ironically, this same participant had originally been involved with encouraging others to
landscape their yards under the guise of an HOA agent when he first moved into the
neighborhood.
Figure 5. Photos of New Xeric Tracts Neighborhood
Residents of this neighborhood were most vocal in their concerns about water
conservation of the three study neighborhoods and largely maintained this principle both
in what they said and in the groundcover they personally maintained.
“I don’t want to exert undue influence over anybody else, but I just think
overall there should be a move toward water conservation because I do see
a lot of people using their sprinklers during the hottest part of the day or
using their sprinklers and it just runs off down.” (300c)
“Not that I think everyone should like desert, but I think it’s important to
have desert out here. I don’t think we should try to turn this into the
Midwest or to California. It’s not suited for that. We’re supposed to be
watching our water. I just think it blends so well with the nature.” (331c)
“We live in a desert so while green grass is pretty and nice to look at, it’s a
maintenance nightmare and a water nightmare… Water’s kind of a
premium around here.” (262c)
In conclusion, participants in this neighborhood also maintained that social
pressures dictated a well-trimmed, manicured yard in the New Xeric Tracts, as people
24
mostly talked about maintaining “neat” yards regardless of groundcover type as
mentioned in the sections above. However, residents added the dimension of injunctive
water conservation along with their desire for neatness. Here too, formal rules dictate
“well-trimmed” thereby reinforcing the norm of neatness; but most importantly, residents
expressed expectations of neatness generally and not in relation to HOA rules.
Conclusion: Implications for Sustainable Urban Landscapes
Askew and McGuirk’s cultural capital framework helps elucidate residential
decision-making in this study through water use and groundcover types (2004) and how
they are similar and vary across the three study neighborhoods. Here, habitus, or the way
people react and interact with their social systems, largely describes residents’ desire to
uphold a status quo of neatness. These desires exist within and across formal and
informal institutions in these diverse neighborhoods. The cultural capital framework also
encompasses the local social interactions within each of the study neighborhoods. In this
study, it is invoked through expectations to conserve water in the New Xeric Tracts, to
preserve lush landscaping in the Historic Mesic District and to maintain mixed
landscaping in the Wealthy Mountain Oasis. Moreover, capital, or the way that control
and influence is divided across social systems, asserts that informal rather than formal
institutions in place were the strongest driving forces behind management decisions as
they were invoked the most. Residents’ yards as ‘fields,’ or the domain in which the
forces of habitus and capital interact, demonstrate that there are similarities across
neighborhoods mainly through their desire to keep things trim and tidy, but also through
the acceptance for a diversity of groundcover types. In particular, the power that is
embodied in norms and customs—especially for neatness—has a strong effect in
reinforcing historic trends and traditions in aesthetic preferences.
Regardless of HOA or non-HOA context of neighborhoods, social norms
reinforce the desire for neatness rather than dictating particular groundcover choices (e.g.,
mesic lawns or xeric, rock-based landscapes), as indicated by Figure 3. Formal
institutional rules also emphasize well-manicured (e.g., mowed, trimmed, etc.) yards,
through these appear relatively insignificant due to a lack of awareness or enforcement of
rules ‘on the books.’ Overall, residents in the study neighborhoods maintained a “live and
let live” mentality—including in HOA areas—whereby interviewees were willing to
tolerate varied landscaping types, as long as neighbors keep plants trimmed and the yard
neat and free of plant litter. The historic neighborhood was the one exception, and even
there, the expectation for ‘neatness’ dominated norms more so than particular
groundcover choices. While we acknowledge that the small sample size of the study
limits generalizability of the results, these findings reflect landscape research done in
other settings—specifically concerning aesthetic preferences for manicured landscapes,
in addition to emerging yard alternatives that are increasing accepted and desired by
residents.
Interestingly, while upbringing affects desired groundcover types and many
residents who maintained a lush groundcover were from the Midwest or similarly green
places, several studies depict a different story. Overall, and statistically speaking, long-
time Phoenicians actually demand grass more so than newcomers overall (Yabiku et al.
2004, Larson et al. 2009; Martin et al. 2003). The resulting oasis custom has dominated
and left a legacy effect in the region, especially in historic areas with more mesic
character. The effects has not been uniform across the Phoenix metropolitan area as
25
demonstrated in the difference between the largely uniform lush character of the Historic
Mesic District and the mixed oasis layout of the Wealthy Mountain Oasis neighborhood
with relatively small patches of grass that are typically in the front of the home. While
residents from more mesic regions may demand having a little slice of lawn to reflect the
preferences and traditions from their place of origin, the mixed oasis yard option may
allow them to have some grass while also addressing other concerns such as water
conservation and what is practical to grow in their new desert home (Larson et al. 2009;
2010). Meanwhile, long-term residents—accustomed to the lush environment of historic
Phoenix—seem to be the ones who actually buy into the mesic landscaping patterns, as
found in other studies (Yabiku et al. 2004, Larson et al. 2009; Martin, 2003).
Water use and conservation has vast implications for the future of the Phoenix
metropolitan area and the state of Arizona as residential uses grow and dominate regional
demands, especially given the possibility of water shortages and potential population
growth. However, as depicted in this study, this concern is often negated and trumped by
individual and social preferences, which are formally facilitated by lax formal ordinances
that do not mandate conservation or water-use efficiency and sometimes even promote
(in historic districts) water use in landscapes. The historic legacy effect of the lush
landscaping in the Historic Mesic District neighborhood is one area of high water use;
however, the Wealthy Mountain Oasis neighborhood (see Appendix A) actually uses
more water on average than any of the other neighborhoods, likely because of water
demands of pools that are common in the neighborhood. Meanwhile, the more recently
developed New Xeric Tracts neighborhood encourages water conservation through
preexisting landscaping and social expectations, as well as through formal regulations
(e.g., restrictions of plants that often require higher water inputs in newer residential
developments) set forth by the local HOA.
One interesting outcome of this study is the paradox of HOAs. Though they are
characterized as reinforcing homogeneity, this study only did not fit that they did, if fact,
explicitly affect landscaping in any sizable way. While varying codified rules on neatness
were included in the books, when residents mentioned them in practice, they invoked
them through personal pressures and social desires to maintain certain aesthetics and not
through HOA rules. In contrast, although residents in non-HOA areas (notably the
Historic Mesic District) expressed disdain for standardization in HOA areas, they
arguably live in the most homogenous area—in terms of landscapes—of the three study
neighborhoods. Even the voluntary formal groups of the Historic Mesic District
reinforced this social cohesion, partly through the maintenance of the dominant landscape
character in the neighborhood.
Instilling and reinforcing norms appears to be a more powerful way to encourage
sustainable landscaping practices regardless of HOA context, since normative beliefs and
pressures were more strongly invoked as influences on residents’ decisions. Normative
emphasis on neatness deviates from the “messiness” of non-managed ecosystems, thus
posing a barrier to promoting naturalistic landscapes with ecological benefits. If HOAs
wish to establish particular benefits or reduce the negative impacts of landscaping, they
may need to not only specify these rules, but also consistently inform residents and work
to enforce them, perhaps through informal normative strategies such messaging in
newsletters or other forums to demonstrate and promote certain yard choices or practices
as socially desirable. Given strong social expectations for well-maintained yards, “cues of
26
care” may be critical for fostering the cultural sustainability of landscapes regardless of
whether they are lawns or some alternative (Nassauer, 2009). Such an approach might
foster the desirability of xeric yards where water conservation is critical, though in the
face of tradeoffs, the promotion of diverse landscapes appears worthwhile for both
environmental and social reasons.
APPENDIX A
Table 2. Summary of Neighborhood Characteristics
Neighborhood
Characteristics Historic Mesic New Xeric Tracts
Wealthy Mountain
Oasis
Location (Phoenix) Downtown Northern Fringe Southern Fringe
Area1 0.24 sq. mi. 1.04 sq. mil. 2.10 sq. mi.+
Age (median)2 38 37 34
# of Households1 406 1014 1399
Household size (avg.)1 2.4 2.5 3.1
% Renters2 25% 6% 3%
Median Income2 $77,404 $59,375 $107,230
% Minority2 26% 16% 15%
Density (pop/km2)
2 1,575 966 720
Land Cover (SAVI) 2 0.569 0.470 0.474
Roof Reflectivity2 *
48% low (asphalt),
some moderate
(wood)
88% medium (tile) 100% medium (tile)
Temp2
(min-max, mean) 39-53
oF, 45
oF 42-59
oF, 51
oF 36-47
oF, 41.1
oF
Pools2, 3
48%2, 26%
3 14%
2, 18%
3 57%
Water Use 2000
(in liters by tract) 3
Category-Total, HH
Avg
Medium – 319,056
L,
321 L
Medium – 129,848
L,
158 L2
High 413,271 L,
269 L4
% Mesic
(w/o SRP irrigation)
45% (11% of total
irrigated by SRP) 4% 8%
Yard Expenditures ($)
Category - 2005 Totals
Overall & by HH#1
Low - $24,533 &
$60.43/HH
Medium - $60,747 &
$59.91/HH
High - $131,232 &
$93.80/HH
Sources 1 Figures from Chris Boone’s database of lawn care expenditures. + Census block for S. Mt. nbhd
is larger than study nbhd. 2 Figures from Harlan et al.’s paper on urban heat island and vulnerability.
3 Figures from Wentz and Gober (census 2000, water 2003). Stefanov et al., 2001 land cover
classification based on a mosaic of adjacent scenes of Landsat TM data acquired May 24-
June 18, 1998, with pixel size of ~28 meters. 80-85% accuracy.
4 Note that the water use in the Wealthy Mountain Oasis is higher than in the Historic
Mesic Tracts.
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APPENDIX B: CAP Yard Management Interview Guide – Winter-Fall 2010
Interviewee ID: ___________________ Study Neighborhood:_______________
Date & Time of Interview: ___________ Interviewer Name:_________________
- must ask probe, ○ optional probe
1. How long have you lived in this house, and why did you choose to live here? [Get
narrative]
2. What was your yard like in the front and back when you moved in?
- Have you changed it? Why? Or why not?
o Was the yard part of your decision to live here?
3. Who takes care of your yard?
- Household members? Private companies? Homeowners’ associations? Etc.
4. How do you handle management tasks such as weeds, rodents, pests, unhealthy plants
etc.?
Who do you talk to?
5. We would like to ask about some specific management practice: [ask for walking tour]
- Do you water your yard? Why or why not?
-How often / How long / Change with season / Where in yard (front/back)
- Do you use fertilizers or compost? What types? Why or why not?
-How often / How much / Change with season / Where in yard (front/back)
- Do you use pesticides or herbicides? What types? Why or why not?
- How often / How much / Change with season / Where in yard (front/back)
6. What else do you do to manage your yard?
○ Front vs. back?
○ Seasonal variation?
7. How did you learn to take care of your yard?
- Information from where?
○ In the past or now? First yard responsibilities?
8. How much time do you spend in your yard?
9. What do you do in your yard? (front vs. back)
○ Different household members? Children? Neighbors? Other guests?
10. What is your ideal yard, and why? (first, in general, front v. back if time)
- Is there an ideal yard for your neighborhood?
- What about for Phoenix?
○ Do you think there’s a standard yard that many Americans try to achieve?
11. What do you think about your neighbors’ yard or the landscaping in your
neighborhood?
- Do people in this nbhd have expectations about how yards should look?
- Is there any pressure in your nbhd to maintain yards in particular way?
12. What do you think of the landscaping throughout Phoenix, in general?
- Do you like the yards and landscaping in the region? Why, or why not?
o Would you like to see changes? What kinds?
29
APPENDIX C: Deductive outline for interview analysis
Research Question:
How do formal and informal institutions influence land management practices in
different residential contexts? How do social norms play out when formal neighborhood
institutions like HOAs are or are not present?
First describe how residents invoke various types of institutions.
Formal o Neighborhood organizations
HOA CCRs (S. Mt. only)
o How do homeowners view their HOAs? Are they
instrumental to make landscaping decisions? Do
people in non-HOA neighborhoods like/dislike
HOAs?
Others (neighborhood association in Encanto)?
o What does Encanto’s neighborhood association do-
does it have the power to create and enforce binding
landscaping rules? How do citizens in the
neighborhood view this kind of organization?
o Municipal ordinances
Restrictions on weeds, etc. (Phoenix)?
Do homeowners know city rules for different management
practices? Is there heavy city enforcement? Does it change
based on neighborhood?
Historical overlay (Encanto only)
How does this affect the character of the neighborhood?
How aware are the citizens of the area?
o Others?
Are there things that homeowners dislike about city management
practices?
Informal o Individuals’ normative beliefs re:
Personal preferences/ideals
o For self and/or
Is leisure/ aesthetics important to
maintaining a yard? What are the most
important components of a yard? How do
people who manage their own landscaping
feel about their property vs. those who have
landscaping companies?
o For others
30
Is curb appeal something that’s important?
Is there a family member that prefers a
certain system of management?
Perceived social preferences/ideals
o Descriptive (what people do)
What do homeowners see as the norm of the
neighborhood? How do they view “rebels”?
o Injunctive (un/desirability of action)
What are the negative landscaping views of
the neighborhood? How are those who
follow those practices treated? What is
acceptable within the context of the
neighborhood?
Ascription to norms (How important is it to conform/non-
conform)
o Landscaping specifically
Do homeowners keep a certain landscaping
to be appropriate to their
neighborhood/make their neighbors happy?
Do they do something differently to make
just themselves happy or to purposefully
distinguish themselves?
o Broader Socialization Patterns/Processes
How did upbringing/ family tradition
reinforce/ not reinforce the strength of their
desire to conform or not conform to
different social pressures?
Next, explain how norms appear to play out across different neighborhood contexts,
especially non/HOA settings.
Institutions invoked by neighborhood
o Which referenced in each neighborhood, and how?
o What similarities & differences exist across Historic Encanto Palms (non
HOA, yet with a historic overlay and neighborhood association) and
Wealthy Mountain cul-de-sacs (HOA-based subdivisions)?
o
Finally, explore overarching themes pertaining to how institutions influence
landscaping practices, in general, across contexts, and relative to other factors.
31
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