Habraken, Jacobs, and Ostrom on governing the built environment: the case of common interest developments

Habraken's Structure of the Ordinary (SOTO), Jacobs' view of cities, and Ostrom's Design Principles and Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework focus on essential elements and relationships for the effective governance of the environment. However, they have different perspectives about what is necessary for successful governance. This article compares and contrasts Habraken's, Jacobs', and Ostrom's views and applies them to Common Interest Developments (CIDs). Habraken, Jacobs, and Habraken discuss the importance of public territory. Habraken views public territory as relative: a territory in a built environment can be private relative to a larger, or higher level, territory, and public relative to an included, lower level, territory. Jacobs discusses the importance of connections and accommodating strangers without sacrificing safety. Ostrom views common-pool resources as goods whose use causes less to be available to others. For their part, CIDs represent a particular governance vehicle for defining what is public and private in large residential developments. For both Habraken and Ostrom, the transformation of the physical environment reflects agents' common values constrained by material, technical, cultural, and economic conditions. Rather than one mutual understanding, Jacobs wrote that balancing the commercial and the guardian values is crucial for society's health and survival.