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A great deal of the information you will find on this website has been compiled from the publications listed below. Most of these books can be found in your local library, and all can be found at any of the big book outlets.

Privatopia: Homeowner Associations and the rise of Residential Private Governments

Dr. McKenzie holds a law degree from the University of California at Los Angeles and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Southern California. He is currently an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago and an adjunct instructor of law at the John Marshall Law School. His research specializations are in the area of law and public policy, and particularly urban policy.

Be Reasonable: How Community Associations Can Enforce Rules Without Antagonizing Residents, Going To Court, Or Starting World War III

Guilt By Association: A Survival Guide For Homeowners, Board Members, And Property Managers

Working With Your Homeowners Association: A Guide to Effective Community Living

Behind the Gates: Life, Security, and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America

Book Review: Behind the Gates is Low's revealing account of what life is like inside these suburban fortresses. After years researching and interviewing families in Long Island, New York and San Antonio, Texas, Low provides an inside view of gated communities to help explain why people flee to these enclaves. Parents with children, young married couples, "empty-nesters," and retirees express their need for safety, their secret fears of a more ethnically diverse America, and their desire to recapture the close-knit, picket-fenced communities of their childhood. Ironically, she shows, gated neighborhoods are in fact no safer than other suburbs, and many who move there are disheartened by the insularity and restrictive rules of the community. Low probes the hopes, dreams, and fears of her subjects to portray the subtle change in American middle-class values marked by the emergence of enclosed communities in the suburbs.

Setha Low is Professor of Anthropology and Environmental Psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is the author or editor of numerous books, including Theorizing the City: The New Urban Anthropology Reader; Housing, Culture, and Design; Cultural Spaces; and Place Attachment.

In this spirited, irreverent critique, Kunstler spares none of the culprits that have conspired in the name of the American Dream to turn the U.S. landscape from a haven of the civic ideal into a nightmare of crass commercial production and consumption. Kunstler strips the bark off the utopian social engineering promoted by the machine-worshiping Modern movement of Gropius, Le Corbusier, and Frank Lloyd Wright and skewers the intellectual camps (e.g., Venturi) that have thrived on making academic glory of the consumer wasteland. With the fervor of an investigative reporter and in the vernacular of a tabloid journalist, Kunstler exposes the insidious ``car lobby'' and gives case studies of landscapes as diverse as Detroit, Atlantic City, and Seaside, Florida, to illustrate both the woes and hopeful notes. The ideas in this book are not new (Jane Jacobs and William H. Whyte Jr. were bemoaning the loss of civic life a quarter-century ago), but Kunstler gives their case an urgent, popular voice. An eminently relevant and important book; highly recommended.