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2012 The Cultural Landscape Analysis of the Domain-Centered Place-Based Community of Ave Maria, Florida Brad Huff

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COLLEGE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND PUBLIC POLICY

THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE ANALYSIS

OF THE DOMAIN-CENTERED PLACE-BASED COMMUNITY

OF AVE MARIA, FLORIDA

By

BRAD HUFF

A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Geography in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2012

Brad Huff defended this dissertation on July 10, 2012.

The members of the supervisory committee were:

Jon Anthony Stallins Professor Co-Directing Dissertation

Victor Mesev Professor Co-Directing Dissertation

Karen L. Laughlin University Representative

Mark W. Horner Committee Member

James B. Elsner Committee Member

The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements.

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No one is an island entire of itself … an appropriate metaphor for geographers made all the more profound by those who complete us. I dedicate this to the person who completes me, my wife, Toni.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I gratefully acknowledge the five members of my committee. I have been privileged to have as my co-directors Drs. Anthony Stallins and Victor Mesev who are each fine geographers and truly decent human beings. They share a fierce commitment to their students, a commitment from which I have repeatedly benefitted. Dr. Stallins, who instructed me in both research methodologies and complexity theory, invited me to think outside the box. Among other things, he encouraged me to explore geography using both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies. Dr. Mesev, the chairman of my department as well as co-director of my committee, taught me by his example to hold a broad vision of the discipline and a strong commitment to the administration, pedagogy, and research that are necessary for its advance. Dr. Mark Horner brings professionalism and command of the discipline to every class he teaches. I have pursued geography largely because in my first geography class, which was with him, I learned to appreciate and enjoy the subject. Dr. James Elsner made statistics, which I have always found threatening, comprehensible. More importantly, I have learned from him the importance of generosity and grace in dealing with students. Dean Karen Laughlin, the outside member of my committee, serves a demanding role in the broader life of the University. She constantly balances the needs of many students, myself included, and in doing so has taught me the importance of balance in my own academic pursuits.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables ...... vi List of Figures ...... vii Abstract ...... ix

1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1 2. RESEARCH CONTEXT WITHIN THE HISTORYOF GEOGRAPHIC THOUGHT ...... 11 3. ‘LANDSCAPE’ AND ‘DOMAIN-CENTERED’ COMMUNITIES ...... 29 4. HISTORY AND THEORY OF METHODOLOGIES APPLIED IN MY STUDY ...... 37 5. METHODS – OBJECTIVE 1 ...... 60 6. METHODS – OBJECTIVE 2 ...... 74 7. RESULTS – OBJECTIVE 1 ...... 89 8. RESULTS – OBJECTIVE 2 ...... 113 9. DISCUSSION OF OBJECTIVES 1 AND 2 ...... 146 10. APPLICATION – THREE EXAMPLES ...... 162 11. CONCLUSION ...... 175

APPENDICES ...... 189 REFERENCES ...... 220 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 231

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LIST OF TABLES

5-1 Events where participant observations were conducted ...... 71

8-1 The global structure of the ontology used to formalize qualitative data for utilization in GIS analysis ...... 114

8-2 Summary of participatory activities that are part of the community’s repertoire ...... 128

8-3 Estimated actual sales per year by neighborhoods in Ave Maria ...... 136

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LIST OF FIGURES

1-1 Ave Maria as originally designed – grey areas were owned by the developers who were holding them for future development ...... 6

4-1 Two methods for computing travel costs from Point A to Point B are compared...... 55

6-1 Natural neighbors coefficients example (Markluffel 2010)...... 80

6-2 Visibility graph geographic extent (left exhibit boxed in red) and the actual area of analysis of open public areas (right exhibit in beige) showing the location of buildings that influence visibility in the area of analysis (right exhibit, buildings in blue)...... 87

7-1 Total respondents from each residential character area ...... 91

7-2 The Oratory during the installation of the sculpture The Annunciation ...... 96

7-3 This aerial shows the situation of the Oratory (turquoise) relative to other buildings in La Piazza (rose buildings east of the main street) and the University mall (yellow area west of the main street) ...... 97

7-4 A representation of the completed relief sculpture The Annunciation with the guilt statues of the apostles in the background ...... 98

7-5 East end of the Academic Mall showing fountains in the foreground, the library and classroom building in the background, and the open grass area along the right side ...... 100

7-6 Adoration Chapel, a site in the center of the town established for devotional meditation, contemplation, and prayer ...... 101

7-7 Memorial to the Unborn is an example of the intensity of conservative Catholic beliefs in Ave Maria...... 102

7-8 The Klucik memorial is an emergent trace ...... 103

7-9 The route the Rosary Walk followed around the campus the evening I participated as recorded by a GPS ...... 104

7-10 Worshipers gathering shortly before the celebration of the Mass ...... 107

7-11 Students study the conservative Catholic interpretive tradition at Donahue Academy ...... 108

8-1 The relationships among the global elements of the ontology are identified in this illustration ...... 115

8-2 The generalized locations of reifications ...... 117

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8-3 The locations of reifications are shown in the left panel and 'important places' in the right panel...... 119

8-4 Natural Neighbor analysis showing the predictive surface of ‘important places’ in the town center relative to the whole development ...... 123

8-5 Natural Neighbor Analysis focused on the predictive surface of ‘important places' in the town center ...... 124

8-6 Routes for mobile participatory performances ...... 126

8-7 Sites of non-mobile participatory performances ...... 127

8-8 Route and co-presence participatory data showing focus of activity in the town center ...... 129

8-9 A composite summarizing the 'important places' surface with the repertoire data ...... 130

8-10 An overview of the entire development showing the configuration of character areas during the first morphological period ...... 132

8-11 An overview of the entire development showing the reconfiguration of character areas during the second morphogenetic period highlighting the incorporation of Bellera Walk into Del Web and the extension of Del Webb related development on the west side of Ave Maria Boulevard...... 138

8-12 The results of the Segment Line analysis displaying the integration metric ...... 140

8-13 Visual Step Depth analysis – Oratory as target ...... 141

8-14 Visual Step Depth analysis – Adoration Chapel as target ...... 142

8-15 Visual Step Depth analysis - Memorial to the Unborn, at the southeast corner of the Student Union building, as Target ...... 142

8-16 Visual Step Depth analysis – Fountain outside ‘The Bean’ as target ...... 143

8-17 Visual Step Depth analysis – ‘Founder’s Field’ as target ...... 143

8-18 Visual Integration analysis of the cultural core area of Ave Maria ...... 144

10-1 Configuration of character areas (CA) in the town center of Ave Maria...... 163

10-2 A crèche located in the town center of Ave Maria ...... 166

10-3 The town meeting flyer posted around Ave Maria ...... 171

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ABSTRACT

My study explores the role of geography in the construction of cultural identity in a unique class of urban settlements, place-based communities of practice. This class of urban communities is characterized as places constructed around a shared domain focus, a normalizing interpretive tradition, and a common day-to-day practice. I argue that these communities provide us with important insights about homogeneity and heterogeneity, useful insights in the construction and spatial configuration of cultural features, and clues about how design can be employed to promote cultural identity.

I first situate my work in geography’s discussion of both ‘place’ and ‘cultural landscapes’. Then I employ recent advances in cultural geography advocated by Jon Anderson that focus on the role of cultural traces to culturally order and geographically border a place. In this literature, cultural traces are the markings, remnants, and remains that cultural groups leave on a landscape. Through a process of cultural landscape analysis, cultural geographers analyze how these traces identify which persons and practices are welcome and unwelcome in a community. Further, traces are studied to identify the extent of a cultural group’s territory.

Anderson wrote his work to address the study of the widest possible range of cultural landscapes. Many of the landscapes he discussed included multiple cultural voices who spoke to very different interests in the same landscape. My study, however, focuses on communities with generally homogenous cultural identities. I am not interested in studying all of the cultural traces in the landscape. I focus on those that speak to the community’s central cultural identity.

I turn to recent work by Etienne Wenger on communities of practice to clarify the specific characteristics and functions of the traces I find relevant to this study. Wenger holds that domain- centered communities are tied together by an interpretive tradition that provides a normative baseline of knowledge and a reservoir of meaning for the community which he calls a ‘repertoire’. His repertoire is divided into things that relate to the interpretive tradition, ‘reifications’, and practices called ‘participations’. Wenger’s work provides the theoretical foundations for selecting some cultural traces while ignoring others. The concept of repertoire clarifies the relationship between the cultural identity of the communities I am interest in studying and the cultural traces that embody that identity. ix

I demonstrate the usefulness of the linkage of Andersons’ and Wenger’s theoretical approaches by exploring the newly constructed town of Ave Maria in the US State of Florida, a community whose domain focus is the day-to-day practice of conservative Catholicism. The study uses a qualitative research methodology to determine the features of the town’s landscape that promote the community’s domain focus. It uses a quantitative research methodology to investigate the contributions that the spatial configuration of those features makes to the community’s cultural identity. An ontology and knowledge base provide a systematic formalization of my qualitative data for subsequent use in quantitative analysis.

My study demonstrates the value of integrating the theoretical perspectives of Anderson and Wenger. Further, the mixed- methods research methodology I developed specifically to study these communities is shown to be effective. My results identify a set of traces and performances that embody the normative standards of the community and demarcate its territory. The spatial configuration of the cultural traces shows clear evidence of design and that design enhances their effectiveness. The normative standards of the community promote a high degree of homogeneity among residents along the community’s domain axis. However that homogeneity is not absolute. There is some degree of heterogeneity within the community that is bounded by the community’s repertoire. Within those boundaries, full members of the community can and do see things differently. The bounded heterogeneity of the group allows it to constantly rework, through negotiation among its members, the group’s cultural identity in ways that cannot be reliably predicted nor fully controlled. ‘Normal’ in this community is dynamic.

It is useful to understand how geography contributes to the construction of ‘normal’ in these highly homogenous communities. In doing so we are better equipped to understand its role(s) in more heterogeneous places. Further, these communities are fairly common components of larger societies. Understanding them enables us to better assess their influence in these larger contexts. Finally, as globalism generally pushes communities towards greater levels of heterogeneity, these communities may become a preferred model for other groups who believe they can benefit from more homogenous places arranged around their own domain interests.

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Five miles north and east of the Florida Everglades, fifteen miles west of the city of Naples, in an area of south Florida that some might call rural but others think of as simply remote, sits a new town, Ave Maria. Planning for this 5,000 acre town started in 2001, construction by 2005, and by 2007 Ave Maria opened for business. What makes this town a subject for study is that it is not just another heterogeneous urban settlement. A billionaire conservative Catholic philanthropist and a local land developer constructed this town to embody a conservative Catholic cultural identity. My research is not a study to see if Catholics live in a Catholic town. In the case of Ave Maria, they do. I knew that from the outset and I was not surprised to find it so during my research. I am not interested in determining the cultural group that lives there. Rather, I want to understand how a unique class of cultural groups, place-based communities of practice, use geography in the construction of their cultural identity. To do so, I need to study a place-based domain-centered cultural group. In this case, it is the conservative Catholics of Ave Maria, Florida. I am researching this community because it shares an unusually high degree of commitment to its domain focus, that shared domain focus is regarded as normative in the community, and it is unashamedly embodied in its landscape. I am studying a place-based community of practice to understand how its domain focus impacts its geography. A community of practice is a cultural group that shares a common purpose, has a set of basic information and skills that a person must know to be a full and competent member of the group, teaches by situated learning, and focuses on the day-to-day practice and refinement of skills that promotes its shared purpose. Consider a medical community - its central purpose is the practice of medicine. Before you are qualified to practice, you must learn the standards of practice and codes of ethics. You must also successfully complete a residency. Once you become a member of the community you practice medicine. My work is significant because it explores what happens when a community decides the melting pot, as a collective representation of place, does not provide sufficient homogeneity to construct its cultural identity, and therefore intentionally chooses to build a place supportive of the construction and maintenance of that identity. It does this through an original combination of Jon Anderson (2010) and Etienne Wenger’s (1998) theoretical work, a combination that extends 1 both previous areas of research. And my work develops an analytical algorithm suitable for studying a range of similar place-based cultural groups. I emphasize cultural landscapes as an analytical unit of spatially configured, meaning- laden constructions. These constructions embody the community’s domain focus and serve a normative function culturally ordering the community. My analysis focuses on how these groups use meaningful construction to embody their cultural identity in their geography, the manner in which the spatial configuration of those constructions contributes to the cultural ordering and geographical bordering of the groups, and the manner in which the spatial interaction of the constructions enhances their utility. Anderson’s work serves as the geographic foundation of my own work. Anderson studies the use of cultural traces in landscapes to culturally order and geographically border cultural groups. Traces are the markings, remnants, and remains a cultural group leaves on a landscape. Cultural groups use traces in their landscapes to identify what is normative for the community and to identify who is, and who is not, welcome in the area. Traces also demarcate the territorial boundaries of the area the cultural group claims for itself. However, he tends to focus on heterogeneous communities. My work extends his work by examining a far more homogenous class of communities. Wenger (1998, Wenger et al. 2002), has developed much of the theory explaining the class of urban settlements I am interested in studying, communities of practice. He introduces them saying:

Communities of Practice presents a theory of learning that starts with this assumption: engagement in social practice is the fundamental process by which we learn and so become who we are. The primary unity of analysis is neither the individual nor social institutions but rather the informal “communities of practice” that people form as they pursue shared enterprises over time. In order to five a social account of learning, the theory explores in a systematic way the intersection of issues of community, social practice, meaning, and identity. The result is a broad conceptual framework for thinking about learning as a process of social participation. (1998, found in the front matter of the 18th printing dated 2008)

While the theoretical understanding of communities of practice is relatively new, the communities themselves have been around since the earliest hominines. Most of the recent research on communities of practice has focused on job-related communities such as insurance claims intake offices and automotive parts research groups. There is little theoretical or research related treatment of the role of place-based contexts in the construction of these communities. 2

My study shows that the geography of at least some subclasses of these communities plays an extremely important role in their functioning. In doing so, my study extends the community of practice literature by addressing this gap. My empirical research was conducted in December 2010 in the south Florida development of Ave Maria, a “new urban” development in Collier County, Florida. The developers for the community are a large land developer in the county, Barron Collier Companies, and the conservative Catholic philanthropist, Tom Monaghan. Planning and permission for the development began in the early 2000’s and construction began in 2005. The land was converted from tomato fields and the town was erected in two years (Figure 1-1). The first phase of the development included the town center, the university, residential neighborhoods, a parochial elementary and high school, infrastructural improvements such as paved roads and a water treatment facility, and recreational facilities that included a water park, golf course, and several recreational parks. The development opened in September, 2007. Its opening drew an initial influx of residents from scattered geographic areas throughout the East, Southeast, and Midwest regions of the United States. Incidentally, in Chapter 10 I analyze how the collapse of the housing bubble led to the reconfiguration of the southern neighborhoods in the development. The goal of my study is to examine, through the academic lineages of cultural landscape analysis and communities of practice theory, how Ave Maria employs spatially configured cultural traces and performances to support the daily practices that are important to its cultural identity and vital to its members.

1.1 - Research Objectives

I have two objectives for my study. My first focuses on describing the domain that forms the focus of the community, in this case the community’s religious interpretive tradition, and on identifying the cultural traces and performances that embody that interpretive tradition. My second objective is to analyze the significance of the spatial configuration of the traces and performances identified in the first objective. The objectives of my study are related through my two-step qualitative/quantitative mixed methods design and through the use of an ontology to formalize my qualitative data for use in my quantitative analysis. The use of two-step designs is relatively common in contemporary geographic research. I use the qualitative approach to research my first objective and a quantitative approach to research my second objective. 3

My study is distinguished from many other two-step studies through the use of an ontology to assist in formalizing the cultural traces identified in the first step for analysis in the second step. Qualitative data needs to be formalized to be utilized in quantitative analysis. Formalization is required, and occurs, in any qualitative / quantitative study. This happens, for example, when qualitative data is represented in a GIS. However it is often executed in an unsystematic manner. An ontology provides a systematic process to formalize qualitative data in a quantitative representation. This promotes greater uniformity of representation in the quantitative environment which can improve the rigor of the study. My study’s intentional development of an ontology and its systematic application to systematize the formalization of qualitative data included in my GIS knowledge base is an unusual characteristic of my methodology.

1.1.1 - Research Objective 1

Describe the religious beliefs that form the domain of the community and the material cultural traces and performances that embody that domain Residents choose Ave Maria primarily because they want a day-to-day conservative Catholic way of life within a supportive community. The first objective seeks to verify this expectation by describing the domain of the community and the cultural traits that embody that domain. Grounded theory provides the methodological framework to meet this objective. It focuses on the identification of meaningful components of the landscape and describes why they are meaningful to the community. It also provides a means for examining the community from positions outside the social group, particularly through its representation from the media. There is a two-fold benefit to this objective. The first is to provide the data necessary to conduct the research for my second objective. The second is to extend Geography’s understanding of how place-based communities of practice employ geographic resources to further their common goals. The inevitable outcome of such communities is a high degree of homogeneity around the axis of their domain focuses, and by studying homogenous communities we can help understand how other highly homogenous communities can, or should, employ their own geographic resources to maximum advantage.

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1.1.2 - Research Objective 2

Analyze the significance of the spatial configuration of the material cultural traces and performances The second objective examines the spatial configuration of the cultural traces and performances identified in Objective 1. The issue is whether spatial configuration is employed to enhance the effectiveness of the community’s traces and performances and, if so, what specific mechanisms are employed. The data collected and analyzed in Objective 1 is natural language data. To use it in Objective 2 it will be necessary to first formalize it. I do this systematically by using an ontology to structure the formalization of it. After the data is formalized it will be represented by a GIS and by a graph analysis software package. While both quantitative and qualitative methods are used in this objective, the emphasis is on quantitative methodologies. Spatial statistics are used to estimate the likelihood that the cultural traces are clustered or dispersed beyond chance. Space syntax assesses the accessibility of the location of the traces. Morphogenetics is used to examine how changes in the economic and social context of the development influence the development’s pattern of regionalization.

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Figure 1-1 Ave Maria as originally designed – grey areas were owned by the developers who were holding them for future development

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1.2 - The Critical Potential of My Research

A major purpose of cultural traces in domain centered communities is to embody the interpretive tradition of the community. The interpretive tradition serves as the normative standard for the community. By embodying it in their cultural traces, the community reinforces cultural order at geographic scale. The cultural traces thereby serve as part of the mechanism to establish the normative assumptions for actions, beliefs, and meanings within the community. The normative functions on the interpretive tradition and the cultural traces that embody that tradition at geographic scale raise a significant number of questions of critical interest. My selection of critical interests focuses on how the underlying assumptions of the community influence, at a very local scale, the ongoing geographic construction of the community’s cultural identity? My analysis shows that through clever use of geography these groups solve collectively matters that have been problems for them individually elsewhere. In particular, they are able to construct a place more in keeping with what they regard as normal. However, even in these place-based communities, the bounded heterogeneity of the groups permits significant differences between full members. Within the bounds of the interpretive tradition, full members constantly renegotiate the particulars of normality in ways that cannot be reliably predicted nor fully controlled. ‘Normal’ in these communities is dynamic. This continuous negotiation of ‘normal’ is embodied in the ongoing construction of the community and interpretation of its repertoire. While the negotiation of what constitutes normal in the community is very local in the cases I have selected, the impetus for the negotiations typically comes from outside the community. Often, though not always, these negotiations are adaptations necessitated by the community’s interactions with the wider world. In Chapter 10 I explore three situations where the critical potential of the interpretative tradition plays out in this local geographic space. In the first instance, the community employs geographic configuration to challenge hegemonic views of separation of church and state established in the U.S. Constitution and formalized in case law. This geographic design permits greater expression of the community’s domain focus and interpretive tradition in the public square without violating the norms established by U.S. law. It also inhibits construction of traces promoting alternative views of faith, again without violating U.S. law. In the second instance, geographic boundaries of the cultural community are adapted in response to the restructuring of the whole development necessitated by the collapse of the national housing bubble. The alteration of the boundaries of the cultural district redefines, at least for some, who is inside and

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outside the community. In the third instance the community wrestles with the possible siting of a mammalian research lab in the development. The community holds different positions regarding the siting. Representatives of the different positions all appeal to aspects of the common interpretive tradition. This shows how interpretive traditions can serve as boundaries to a spectrum of heterogeneous positions full members of the community can hold. Within this bounded heterogeneity, an economy of meaning constantly renegotiates what is normative for the community. There are many areas of critical interest that I have left unexplored in this research. For example, I have not explored how the community interacts with conservationists who have expressed concerns about the development’s location in the center of the habitat of Florida Panthers, an endangered species. The conservationists’ concerns raise potentially interesting questions about how the community’s interpretive tradition speaks to questions of ecological stewardship in regard to matters of development. Another area of critical interest I have not explored is organizations with a different view of the convergence of faith and power in the civic arena such as the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU has already opposed efforts to restrict access to birth control, abortions, and pornography in the community. In doing so it has questioned the degree to which developers exercise unfettered control over a development, even when such control is in the service of the community’s domain-focus. A third critical interest I have not explored concerns the community’s relationship with other communities in the region. For example, what is the relationship between the community and Immokalee, Florida, its neighbor to the north? The two communities hold very different socio-economic statuses. To what extent does Ave Maria’s interpretive tradition inform the community’s relationship with its neighbor? And some of the residents of the community participate in protests at the Planned Parenthood offices in Naples. Again, how does their interpretive tradition inform their decision to protest, and, conversely, how would it inform their response were others to attempt to protest aspects of the community’s life in the development? I believe these, and a host of similar critical interests, are vital questions for future research.

1.3 - Organization of the Remaining Chapters

The rest of the chapters are organized into four broad sections. Chapter 2 focuses on the history of cultural landscape analysis. Chapter 3 positions my research relative to a contemporary view of cultural landscape analysis developed by Anderson (2010). It also identifies Ave Maria as a community of practice and positions it relative to communities of practice theory developed 8

by Wenger (1998). Chapter 4 describes the methodological tradition of the mixed methods approach. The second broad section of the dissertation provides an in-depth review of the methods used to collect and analysis data. Chapters 5 and 6 identify the specific methodologies employed in my research identifying their historical lineage, their actual practice, the sources of data required to conduct them, and the methods and sources for acquiring that data. Chapter 5 focuses on the qualitative methodology of grounded theory. Chapter 6 focuses on a variety of quantitative and qualitative methodologies including GIS used both quantitatively and qualitatively and the ontology used to formalize data acquired qualitatively in the GIS, morphogenetics, and space syntax. The third broad section reports the results of the analysis of the data. Chapter 7 reports the descriptive demographics and the information derived from grounded theory. Chapter 8 documents the information developed from the remaining methodologies. The fourth broad section examines the findings from the analysis of the data. Chapter 9 synthesizes the analysis into two key findings. Chapter 10 applies those findings to provide insight to three contemporary aspects of Ave Maria’s cultural life. Chapter 11 relates the findings to the academic discipline of geography showing the contributions they make to the discipline. It also explores the strengths and weaknesses of the research and identifies areas for future research.

1.4 - Conservative Catholicism

A term frequently employed in my study is conservative Catholicism. Several studies have identified the key features of this position in relation to the larger American Catholic Church. The two that have provided the defining features for my study are Cuneo’s The Smoke of Satan: Conservative and Traditionalist Dissent in Contemporary American Catholicism (Cuneo 1997) and Weaver and Appleby’s edited volume, Being right: conservative Catholics in America (Weaver and Appleby 1995). Cueno broadly classified groups on the religious right wing of the American Catholic Church as conservatives, separatists, and mystical (particularly Marianist and apocalyptic). Weaver and Appleby classified them as European movements with American presences, traditionalist groups, groups organized to fight abortion and feminism, educational and intellectual movements, liturgical groups, and miscellaneous conservative initiatives. Each study identifies significant subcultures within their broader categories. Both studies emphasized that 9

the American Catholic Church in general and the right wing of the Church in particular cannot be essentialized. However, many of the groups they identify seemed to share a core set of characteristics. The groups were categorized largely on the particular emphasis they place on each of these characteristics. Weaver and Appleby describe these common characteristics saying:

At the same time, it was clear to us that there was a significant body of American Catholics united in their opposition to modernity, a word that could be expanded to include postconciliar "abuses," pro-choice rhetoric, insufficient respect for papal authority, failure to obey Catholic teaching about artificial birth control, the tendency to lose touch with the great voices of the "Catholic revival" in the 1930s and 1940s, an abandonment of the devotional tradition of the church, and a disregard for the sound conclusions of scholastic theology. (1995, viii)

Cueno summarized this core set of characteristics saying:

No less that the Protestant right or the secular political right, these Catholics are deeply aggrieved by the more permissive society that has come into being since the 1960s; deeply offended by America’s new culture of boundless narcissism. But they are just as aggrieved, just as offended, by the current state of the institutional Roman Catholic Church in the United States (and some by the state of the church in Rome as well). Over the past three decades, in their view, American Catholicism has become – well, there’s no better way of putting it – American Catholicism has become too American. In a pathetic stab for cultural relevance, they claim, the Catholic church in the United States has strip- malled its liturgical life, compromised its doctrine, and squandered its moral capital. Once defiant and blessedly haughty, the church is now a cheap floozy, cozying up to the modern world, smiling, winking, desperate for flattery and approval. (1997, ix-x)

While these definitions may seem inflammatory, both works further identified these characteristics in somewhat less provocative ways. In Ave Maria I found the following specific characteristics. They are listed here and further developed in Chapter 7, 9, and 10. Members of the Ave Maria community support the papacy, respect the encyclicals and councils (including Vatican II), and honor a conservative interpretation of the Roman Catholic tradition. They hold to a supernatural view of the world believing God is both real and is involved in their individual and collective daily lives. They enjoy traditional liturgies and have a particular appreciation for the Tridentine Mass and for devotions. Most welcome the guidance of the Church in their daily lives. Members of the community embrace “traditional” morality, “family values,” and many share a strong commitment to the opposition to abortion and birth control.

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CHAPTER TWO

RESEARCH CONTEXT WITHIN THE HISTORY OF GEOGRAPHIC THOUGHT

In this chapter, I summarize how the concepts of cultural landscapes have evolved in geography and how they inform my research. The chapter synthesizes the relevant literature from cultural geography, notably cultural landscapes and place analyses.

2.1 - Cultural Landscape - Space and Place

The word ‘landscape’ entered the Old English lexicon at approximately the same time as the emergence of early systems of capitalism. In its Old English and German variants, it suggested “a land under identifiable ownership by an individual or a group” (Oakes and Price 2008, 149). Shortly thereafter, it took on the sense of an administrative division of land (Ibid.). In the Romantic languages, its use “invoked a sense of a cohesive region, smaller than today’s nation-states, which possessed a distinctive local character” (Ibid.). In the seventeenth century, the concept became more closely associated with the visual representation of scenery and particularly with the emergence of Dutch ‘landschap’ painters (Ibid.). The concept of landscape developed in North American geography in the mid-1900s with the work of Carl Sauer. Sauer defined geography as the study of ‘area.’ Area was a “naively given, important section of reality” (Sauer 1996, 298) about which there was a common curiosity. Area was naively understood in areal units and the fundamental areal unit was the ‘landscape.’ In Sauer’s opinion, “the task of geography is conceived as the establishment of a critical system which embraces the phenomenology of landscape, in order to grasp in all of its meaning and color the varied terrestrial scene” (Ibid., 299). He used the term landscape to, “denote the unit concept of geography, to characterize the peculiarly geographic association of facts” (Ibid., 300). According to Sauer, a landscape was ‘an area made up of a distinct association of forms, both physical and cultural’ (Ibid.). These two categories of forms defined for him the two content areas of landscape analysis; natural (or physical) landscapes and cultural landscapes. Natural landscapes focused on features that were developed by the processes of nature, free from the influence of people (Ibid., 303). In reaction against environmental determinism, a fading but still widely accepted view in geographic thought at the outset of his writing, Sauer held that cultural

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landscapes were formed as a result of the influence of people on nature, or, as Sauer put it, "the impress of the works of man upon the area" (Ibid.). According to Oakes and Price (2008, 90), Sauer largely adopted Paul Vidal de la Blache’s view of regional chorology (the study and descriptions of regions). De la Blache emphasized that cultures and landscapes formed as the result of a variety of factors including, but not limited to, the environment. The views of De la Blache and his students were summarized by Anderson (2010, 18):

From their observations, environments offered possibilities from which human groups could generate their own activities and processes, they did not render inevitable certain destinies and outcomes. From this perspective, therefore, humans were not considered to be passive automatons responding to the natural world; rather, they were active agents creating their own cultures and to some extent their environments.

Sauer emphasized that landscapes rose out of the association between the geographical elements in an area. Landscapes bore the generic characteristics of repeating forms arranged into patterns and were modified by the particular circumstances of their locale and period. Specific landscapes were viewed as instantiations of a general series of landscapes. Their generic qualities formed the basis for the systematic treatment of landscapes and for the integration of particular landscapes into broader regional groupings. Geography, according to Sauer, was nomothetic because it paid attention to those generic qualities. Ultimately, the selection of which generic elements were, and which were not, parts of the landscape, fell to the judgment of the researcher who made that determination based upon the morphological method (Sauer 1996, 300-301). The morphological method was a two-step methodology in which the researcher first described, using a predetermined lexicon, the elements of the landscape. Then the researcher would ‘meticulously uncover the layers of human activity that had shaped the visible landscape in particular ways’ (Oakes and Price 2008, 149). The morphological method grew out of the view that the landscape was a palimpsest, a surface on which multiple layers of inscriptions build up over time. It came from the ancient practice of writing on wax surfaces where portions of an original document were overwritten by subsequent generations of scribes. Each scribe left clues about the culture he or she was a part of based on what was preserved, removed, and added. In a similar way, cultures left their traces on landscapes. Through the study of what was constructed, preserved, removed, and added, the cultural geographer identified “the presence and passing of different cultural groups” (Anderson 2010, 20). 12

Sauer was concerned that geography take its proper seat in the emerging world of positivist thought. Therefore, he taught that the role of the geographer was primarily evidentiary. “Underlying what I am trying to say is the conviction that geography is first of all knowledge gained by observation, that one orders by reflection and re-inspection the things one has been looking at, and that from what one has experienced by intimate sight come comparison and synthesis” (Sauer 1963, 400). The job of the geographer was to provide empirical evidence by observing and reliably describing landscapes. The geographer documented how cultures created and employed artifacts to shape the face of the landscapes they occupied. In Sauer’s opinion, it was not the job of the geographer to interpret the meaning of landscapes. I share Sauer’s view that people shape and mold the landscape. For me, this is the ‘cultural’ in cultural landscapes. Cultural landscapes are both the matrix and the product of the interactions of our cognitive and material worlds. They are palimpsests on which are inscribed the imprint, the traces, of our efforts to embody our cognitive world in material constructions. Since both the material world and our cognitive worlds continue to evolve, we continue to amend that which we have inscribed on our landscapes. Unlike Sauer, I believe it is the geographer’s job to both describe and interpret these palimpsests. Further, I appreciate Sauer’s emphasis on the importance of empirical data and the role of field observations. His morphological approach to studying artifacts was influential in portions of my own methodological approach though I have adopted more recent theory and techniques. Another trajectory in cultural geography of relevance to my research involved the confluence of cultural geography with geotechniques. The 1960s saw the rapid rise of a previously nascent quantitative view of landscape that, over time, became ‘deeply rooted in measurable data compiled and analyzed by computer’ (Oakes and Price 2008, 150). Further, it emphasized the nomothetic, the law-making or ‘generalizing’ interests of research over the ideographic, or ‘particularistic’ interests. These interests were instrumental in research using a ‘scientific’ methodology that largely focused on abstraction and quantification of data and has become known as the ‘quantitative approach.’ This view, which has its roots in much older cartographic and urban planning traditions (Pickles 2004), began to displace Sauer’s ideographic views of the domain of landscape analysis. It was criticized as being too essentializing (Kwan 2002a). Nonetheless, the quantitative view was adopted by many human geographers and continues as a contemporary form of landscape analysis, particularly when implemented with computers. Postpostivists generally adopted the view that scientific knowledge was knowledge

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created from a local perspective; it was bound to the worldviews of a particular time and place. That perspective influenced a researcher’s questions, theory, methods, results, and conclusions (Kuhn 1962, Barnes 2000a). How can geography captured in natural language be expressed in the formal language a computer understands for purposes of analysis and representation without becoming overly essentialized? Geographers have approached this question through a discourse on ontology. Ontology is a concept with a philosophical history dating back at least to Aristotle (Schuurman 2006, 731). Philosophy defines ontology in many ways, including:

• ‘the field that answers questions of being or existence’ (Smith and Mark 2003, 412) • ‘what exists a priori to perception, knowledge, or language (Winter 2001, 587) • ‘a theory concerning the kinds of entities … that are to be admitted to a language system’ (Kuhn 2001, 614)1 • the answer to ‘the question of what the world must be like for knowledge to be possible’ (Derek Gregory. "Ontology" in Johnston et al. 2000, 561-564)2.

Early computer-based mapping systems began to emerge in the late 1950s. Geographic information systems (GIS) emerged in the early 1960s. The ontological viewpoint that informed the development and use of these early systems, in other words, the world these systems were constructed to represent and analyze, were largely those of logical positivists. Consistent with quantitative thought of the era, the ontologies they created were often attempts to mathematize a definition of the world. In these definitions, existence was restricted to those things that could be described mathematically. In the 1960s and 1970s the radical and critical schools of geographic thought emerged. There were many reasons why early GIS, and the ontologies they were based on, did not attract much attention from these geographies. The early GIS systems were esoteric, government-owned and controlled, and not generally well known. The computers to run the systems were expensive with much slower processing power compared to today. In the 1980s, several commercial vendors of GIS software emerged. This, combined with an explosion of desktop computers capable of running the systems, improvements in the utility and functionality of the systems,

1 Kuhn’s quotation is drawn from Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (Gove and Merriam Webster 1993). 2Gregory’s quotation is drawn from Bhaskar (1978). 14

GPS becoming operational, and the generally perceived value of the systems’ products led to rapid growth in GIS and to the emergent underlying understandings of the systems known as geographical information science (GISc). Critical GIS emerged in the 1990s. It was a convergence of critical thought, particularly concerning positivist ontologies, and an interest in the representational and analytical capabilities of GIS. It focused on the perceptions that GIS represented a new, and unwelcomed, incarnation of quantitative geography. Objections raised by existentialists and phenomenologists about overly mathematized and excessively narrow definitions of existence were woven into critical discourses about ‘perspectives’ and the roles they play in establishing, legitimizing, and perpetuating power relationships. In the mid to late 1990s critical GIS and of GISc refocused on positively influencing the on-going development of the GISc and GIS. According to Nadine Schuurman, it was during this time questions regarding what ‘exists’ and the nature of that ‘existence’ found their way into GISc (Schuurman 2006, 726-730). In that context, researchers wrestled with what could ‘exist’ in GIS domains; what, by the very structure of the domains, was excluded from ‘existence’; and how these inclusions and exclusion reflectively influenced the understanding of existence outside of the GIS domain. A theme issue of the International Journal of Geographical Information Science in 2001 focused on GIS ontologies. The issue’s theme was aptly described in the editorial summary titled, “Ontology: buzzword or paradigm shift in GI science?” (Winter 2001). Winter summarized a growing distinction between the use of the term in philosophical discourse and its use in knowledge engineering (Ibid., 587). The distinction became a common element in discourses on GIS ontologies (Schuurman 2006, Smith and Mark 2003, Winter 2001, Fonseca et al. 2002). The distinction between its use in philosophical discourse and knowledge engineering was based largely on the differences in natural and formal languages. Formal languages are complete and internally logical systems (Smith and Mark 2003, 412). The 'reality' of something is irrelevant to formal languages. For example, it is unimportant to formal language that your 'reality' includes something as irrelevant as hobgoblins. What is important is whether it exists in the sense of being quantifiable in and necessary to your system (Smith and Mark 2003, 412). Do you need to know how many hobgoblins there are in order to formulate some theory or make some prediction about your reality? Can you count those hobgoblins? If so, then in the domain of knowledge engineering, they exist and the epistemological questions become how to type or categorize their kinds and how to identify their

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individuals. These logic systems are subsequently formalized by rendering them into a form ‘that can ultimately be represented in a digital environment’ (Schuurman 2006, 730) and translated to code that can be run on computers. These codes are ultimately mathematical and algebraic expressions. Kuhn (2001) points out that the division of labor between ‘domain theorists’ who understand the particular ontological needs of their domain for effective consideration of its theory and ‘knowledge experts’ who understand the particulars of coding, adds to the challenge of creating useful formal ontologies. Natural language, the typical language of human communications, lacks the neatness of formal language but gains from its messiness a far broader palate of expression. Bibby and Shepherd described natural language in social contexts as ‘the vehicle which binds or links socioeconomic entities and physical matter’ (2000, 584). Schuurman points out ‘there is nothing in mathematical logic that makes it suitable to model human reasoning’ (2006, 730). In other words, human beings can conceive of many things that cannot be represented in formal logic or adequately expressed mathematically. According to Bibby (2000), the necessary convergence of these two languages leads to the ontological challenges of GISc and the representational challenges of GIS. Egenhofer and Mark (1995) addressed these challenges by developing an approach they referred to as ‘Naïve Geography.’ They identified it as a ‘qualitative reasoning’ method. Qualitative reasoning methods differ from quantitative reasoning methods in that quantitative methods use absolute values whereas qualitative methods use magnitudes. Qualitative reasoning’s use of magnitudes produced analysis and results that were ranges with the correct answer lying at some point within the range. This allowed for the analysis of incomplete data sets. According to Egenhofer and Mark (1995), it was this capacity to deal with incomplete data sets that made qualitative reasoning methods a useful way of dealing with spatial phenomena. They defined Naïve Geography as ‘the body of knowledge that people have about the surrounding geographic world’ (1995, 4) and saw as its task the formal modeling of common- sense (instinctive, spontaneous) knowledge of geographic spaces. They defined geographic space as being composed of objects too large to be manipulated. For example, while you can pick up a car’s motor (not geographic space by their definition) you cannot pick up a hotel (geographic space by their definition). Naive ontologies formed the foundation of their approach. These were incomplete data sets of geographic features that were developed into ‘classes’ of ‘objects’ (Smith and Mark 2003,

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Egenhofer and Mark 1995, Smith and Mark 2001). Their classic example of naïve ontologies, and the naïve geography that builds upon it, is mountains (2003). They ask, quite simply, do they exist? When considered as, say, fields (hydrological fields, elevations, etc.) they concluded that mountains do not exist. However, common sense tells one that they do exist. Knowing the location of mountains could afford a traveler who wants to avoid them the opportunity to change paths before reaching them. Knowing their location could afford a developer who wants to build a new subdivision benefitting from mountain viewshed the opportunity to develop on them. What is more, mountains are immobile. Hence, as a category of naïve geography they do exist. But to say they exist raises some difficult questions such as: how do you distinguish Balsam Mountain from the range of mountains known as the Smoky Mountains? Is there a place where Balsam Mountain starts and ends? How do you distinguish the Smoky Mountains from the foothills? The adherents of Naïve Geography emphasize that qualitative reasoning methods are not a replacement for quantitative methods and that Naïve Geography is not a replacement for all other forms of representation in GIS. However, they feel that adapting GIS and GISc to operationalize Naïve Geography would substantially enhance the functionality of both. Kuhn (2001) took a different tact in his study of GIS ontologies. He asked whether ‘activities’ were more ontologically significant than ‘objects.’ He defined geographical space as ‘a system of entities and actions.’ He argued that contemporary ontologies were not designed to accommodate these activities but to only accommodate existing data.3In terms of GIS, existing data were object and field data. It was his view that entities and actions should determine what was formalized by the domain ontologies of GIS. Both naïve ontology and Kuhn’s ontology relied on the concept of ‘affordance’ developed by the psychologist James J Gibson. The concept was later refined by Donald Norman, a cognitive scientist, to ‘perceived affordance’ (Kuhn 2001, 617). According to Kuhn, affordance is the view that, “The things that human beings distinguish in the world depend on the actions they afford” (2001, 617). In this context ‘perceived affordance’ is the notion that human beings only recognize a certain range of actions afforded by a ‘thing’ and will be more likely to act within that range or recognition. For example, a human upon entering a room might see a chair and a Frisbee. While it would be possible to throw the chair and sit on the Frisbee (allowed

3 His suggestions seem generally similar to those of Kitchin and Dodge in their explorations of the ontologies underlying maps (2007) wherein they argue that the notion of ontologies (how things are) should give way to the notion of ontogenesis (how things become). 17

under Gibson’s original definition of affordance) it is more likely that the human will sit in the chair and throw the Frisbee. According to Smith and Mark (2003, 414):

It is important to stress that affordances for Gibson - including those affordances called hills and mountains- exist as part of the perceived environment. Thus it is not merely because people have concepts of mountains and similar features that it is necessary to appeal to landforms in giving an account of their beliefs and behavior but also because such concepts relate to corresponding parts of their environments in direct and specific ways. Mountains, in this sense, do really exist.

Together affordance and formalization bridged much of the gap between domain theorists and knowledge experts. It provided a means for domain theorists to design valid ontologies that could be reliably coded by knowledge experts. Schuurman concluded, “The ability to work across the unnatural divide of pure empiricism and conceptualization is the hallmark of this research” (2006, 735). From a postpostivist perspective, in my study I analyze cultural landscapes as sites. In that sense, I study them as spaces with spatially configured geographic features. The geographic features I am interested in are primarily the domain related cultural traces and performances identified in natural language. I redefine those features in the formal language computers understand before I analyze them in a GIS. I use an ontology to facilitate that definition. When I analyze those features in the GIS, I am interested in understanding how their spatial configuration contributes to the geographical bordering and cultural ordering of the site. I adopt the postpostivist position that all research is constructed and as such represents a positionality that filters research questions and analytical methods, data observed, representations of the data, its synthesis, and conclusions.

2.2 - Humanistic Geography

The landscape has also been part of humanist geography. Cultural places and space are individually inhabited experiences. The humanistic movement among cultural geographers in the 1970s included a non-quantitative renaissance of interest in landscapes. The works of Tuan (1979, 1977, 1976, 1975) were fine examples of this renewed interest. Tuan reflected on the experience of place, region, and territory. He asked what self-knowledge such reflections generated and pondered how such self-knowledge enabled persons to meet more fully their potential as humans (1976, 275). In specifically speaking of landscapes, he said:

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Landscape is an ordering of reality from different angles. It is both a vertical and a side view. The vertical view sees landscape as domain, a work unit, or a natural system necessary to human livelihood in particular and to organic life in general; the side view sees landscape as space in which people act, or as scenery for people to contemplate. The vertical view is, as it were, objective and calculating. The farmer has to know how much land he has under each crop and how many head of cattle the pasture will support. The geographer studies the rural landscape in a similar way – that is to say, from “above”; likewise the ecologist when he looks at landscape as a natural system. The side view, in contrast, is personal, moral, and aesthetic. A person is in the landscape, working in the field, or he is looking out of a tenement window, from a particular spot and not from an abstract point in space. If the essential character of landscape is that it combines these two views (objective and subjective), it is clear that the combination can take place only in the mind’s eye. Landscape appears to us through an effort of the imagination exercised over a highly selected array of sense data. It is an achievement of the mature mind. (1979, 90)

One of the focuses of the humanistic view of landscapes was on ‘place.’ Place was a concept that distinguished the humanist approach from quantitative approaches that were focused on ‘space.’ Prior to the humanistic movement, the concept of place had been widely circulated but, outside of possibly Lukermann (1964), poorly theorized. Cresswell called it a “largely common-sense idea” (2004, 18) prior to the work of the humanistic geographer Edward Relph (1976). Relph made an extensive study of space and concluded that in the abstracted sense of the positivists, it made a suitable medium for nomothetic analysis however it was unsuitable for understanding the full geographic context of life.

"We must admit that abstract space has no counterpart and no foundation in physical or psychological reality”, Ernst Cassirer has declared (1970, pp.48-49). “The points and lines of the geometer are neither physical nor psychological objects; they are nothing but symbols for abstract relations”. In abstract space all the concrete differences of our sense experiences are eliminated; space is conceived, for example, as “continuous, isotropic, homogeneous, finite or infinite” (Jammer, 1969, p.7). In such space places are merely points, symbols constituting just one element within the overall system of abstract elements. (1976, 26)

Relph developed a phenomenological analysis of place to provide an alternative to the quantitative viewpoint of space. Relph says of place:

The essence of place lies in the largely unselfconscious intentionality that defines places as profound centres of human existence. There is for virtually everyone a deep association with and consciousness of the places where we were born and grew up, where we live now, or where we have had particularly moving experiences. This association seems to constitute a vital source of both individual and cultural identity and security, a point of departure from which we orient ourselves in the world. A French philosopher, 19

Gabriel Marcel, (cited in Matore, 1966, p.6) has summarized this simply: “An individual is not distinct from his place; he is that place. " (Ibid., 43)

Relph believed ideographic studies were too particular to develop a useful understanding of place and nomothetic studies were too general. In the alternative, he suggested the study of place should proceed by, “an approach and attendant set of concepts that respond to the unity of 'place, person, and act' and stress the links rather than the division between specific and general features of places” (Ibid., 44). For Relph, phenomenology was the proper epistemological and methodological approach to place. Cresswell pointed out that the shortcoming of a phenomenological orientation to place was its own universalizing search for the ‘essential’ and ‘authentic’ aspects of place. The humanistic approach was interested in the experiential essence of place. In pursuit of universalizing essence it ignored the difference that often characterizes the experience of place. Entrikin (1991) offered an interesting middle ground between the space of quantitative geographers and the place of humanist geographers. Entrikin argued that the theoretical scientist assumed the more objective and decentered end of an analytical spectrum from objectivity to subjectivity as a teleological consequence of her or his research endeavor. For this reason place viewed from a position toward the objective end of the spectrum was universalized. From the decentered vantage point of the theoretical scientist, place became either a location or a set of generic relations and thereby lost much of its significance for human action. However, he argued, people typically experienced their world and hence place from the subjective and centered end of the spectrum. From the subject end, places tend to be particularized. From the centered viewpoint of the subject, place has meaning only in relation to an individual's or a group's goals and concerns. Entrikin argued for a view of place that benefited from both objective and subjective positions. Place, according to Entrikin, was best viewed from points in between.

We understand the specificity of place from a point of view, and for this reason the student of place relies upon forms of analysis that lie between the centered and decentered view; such forms may be described as narrative-like syntheses. In their syntheses geographers have adopted a point of view that is less detached than that of the theoretical scientist and more detached than that evident in the accounts of the travel writer. (Ibid., 3)

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I have followed Entrikin (1991) and Tuan (1977) in their emphasis on the usefulness of both objective and subjective analytical positions in landscape and place analysis. I found that the adoption of elements of both views helps me to avoid the reductionism found at either extreme. I am grateful for the focus humanistic geography brought to the previously under- theorized concept of place. However, I follow poststructural and postmodern thought in rejecting a phenomenological position in my work because it ignores the constructed nature of landscape and place, overlooks the important role of difference in that construction, and essentializes both in the pursuit of their universal experience.

2.3 - Poststructural

In the late 1980s, another stream of non-quantitative landscape analysis emerged. “Theory and methods developed in linguistics, literary criticism, and semiotics - fields that emphasize the construction in meaning through symbols, symbolic systems, and languages - were utilized by cultural geographers to read the landscapes as a sort of text” (Oakes and Price 2008, 151). Peet (1998) identified this work as poststructural and postmodern, distinguishing between the two saying, “there are no sharp differences between poststructural and postmodern philosophies. Generally, however, poststructural philosophy criticizes the certainties of modern knowledge, as with its claims to coherence, neutrality, and truth, while postmodern philosophy carries this further into an alternative discourse based on oppositional modes of understanding” (1998, 208). The ‘new cultural geographers’ who embraced poststructural views emphasized that landscapes were far more fluid than crystallized and as such were open to various, often conflicting, representations and interpretations. Cosgrove (2008, 2006) was a cultural geographer who took his cues from the poststructuralist and postmodernist thinkers of the 1980s. He argued for a ‘new reading’ of the cultural landscape. He began by acknowledging the work of landscape analysis and interpretation that had preceded his own efforts and particularly the work of Sauer and his students who had ‘read’ the material dimensions of the cultural landscape. However, he was quick to point out that Sauer’s utilitarian formalism deprived landscape of its meaning and rendered it a passionless enterprise devoid of an understanding of the elegance human life’s expression in the landscape. Further, it failed to recognize human motivation “other than the narrowly practical” (2008, 178).

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Cosgrove described cultural landscapes as “’a way of seeing’, a way of composing and harmonizing the external world into a ‘scene’, a visual unity” (Ibid., 179). He traced its roots to the mechanical arts of the Renaissance and the development of linear perspective, the way of seeing that produced rationally composed three-dimensional space in two dimensions. Regardless of whether the landscape was represented in nature, brick and stone, poetry, painting, or other media, “All landscapes carry symbolic meaning because all are products of the human appropriation and transformation of the environment” (Ibid., 180). He held that landscape interpretation relied on reading the symbolic dimensions of the landscape. For Cosgrove, this was accomplished using many of the intertextual tools that were being successfully deployed throughout the social sciences during this time. This view held that symbols in the landscape did not have their own singular inherent meaning. Rather, their meanings were established from the discourses that surrounded them. These multilayered, simultaneously valid, often contested, never conclusive readings explored “the idea of human intervention and control of the forces that shape and reshape our world” (Ibid., 179). He looked not only at the effects of those interventions but also at the means, processes, and purposes used to shape those interventions. Cosgrove argued that an intertextual methodology to decoding the meaning of landscapes should be informed by such diverse symbolic evidence as paintings, novels, music, planning documents, Euclidean geometry, the glyphs of tramps, graffiti from street gangs, folk tales, film, and song. Cosgrove’s evidence was anything that shed light on the meaning of a landscape to those who constructed, maintained, altered, removed, visit it, etc. He emphasized the importance of weighing historical texts to understand the context of a landscape’s construction and imaginary texts (such as sci-fi dreamscapes) to understand alternatives to the hegemonic cultural view that was the predominant force in shaping the landscape. Methodologically, Cosgrove felt the researcher should balance a close detailed reading of the text, based on the intimacy of fieldwork, with “’critical distance’, a disinterested search for evidence and a presentation of that evidence free from conscious distortion” (Ibid., 181). Duncan (1990) is a ‘new cultural geographer’, known both for his elaborations on and applications of representational theory and his combination of intertextual and critical approaches to cultural geography. This was particularly evident in The city as text which was a representational analysis and interpretation of the landscape of the city of Kandy in modern day Sri Lanka during the closing days of the Kandyan Kingdom (1990). He held that all of the elements of the built environment were constructed to convey specific ideological meanings. He

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included, for example, the configuration of the infrastructure, the location of open spaces and buildable lots, land use, and building iconography in his intertextual analysis of Kandy. He emphasized that the meaning of these landscape elements was not apparent to simple observation. It required a theoretically informed intertextual reading of the various elements to identify the range of discourses carried on in the various mediums.

The whole basis of this kingly reading of the city was metaphoric and metonymic. Through the magic of parallelism, synecdochic elements in the landscape stand for and attract to themselves the power of the larger allegorical whole. These relationships which are established symbolically are highly complex. They are not only metaphorical in an especially efficacious way, but through the important religious concept of liminality they are metonymic or syntagmatic, for there is a kind of contiguity established between heavenly and earthly landscapes through such mechanisms as the cosmic axis. (1990, 118)

Duncan emphasized that these texts were more than mere inscription; they were parts of larger discourses. Just as there was more than one culture at play in Kandy, there was more than one discourse embodied in the city’s landscape. These discourses collectively formed a discursive field and this field set the general parameters within which each narrative had to fall to be effective. The readings of the same text by different paradigm communities (for example the community of kings, the community of nobles, the community of artisans, the community of ordinary citizens, etc.) led to very different understandings and conclusions. For example the King saw the building program as a celebration of the city of the gods, the nobles saw it as a power grab, and the ordinary folks saw it as a tax burden. As Oakes pointed out:

Duncan emphasizes that landscapes are definitely not unproblematic documents that can be read much as a book can be read. Rather, Duncan’s point is that landscapes are many- layered entities full of erasures, silences, and struggles for power. (2008, 186).

Duncan himself considered the landscape of Kandy “a highly complex, intertextual, and multivocal system of communication (1990, 118). Poststructural geographers have focused on the social construction of place. Places do not simply happen. The materiality of their construction and the meaning they embody are historically constrained and enabled social productions that are reproduced with historically responsive modifications over time. The positions of pools, fountains, and gardens in Duncan’s 23

Kandy were spatially configured and their ornamentation was designed to embody specific ideological meanings. The spatial configuration and the symbolic ornamentation varied over time and their variance is reflective of underlying changes in Kandy’s dominant identities and ideologies. David Harvey felt social construction so obvious that he (in)famously opined, “Place, in whatever guise, is like space and time, a social construct. This is the baseline proposition from which I start. The only interesting question that can then be asked is: by what social process(es) is place constructed” (1996, 261). There has, in fact, been a good deal of discussion about the process(es) that serve as the dynamic engines of social construction with most allowing that a combination of processes ultimately drive it. Cresswell holds that the constructivist view of place is the dominant view in contemporary geography. The two components of place, that are particularly clear social constructions, are the ‘meaning’ and the ‘materiality’ of place. Regarding the meaning of a particular place he says, “the way we experience that place, the meanings we ascribe to it, come out of a social milieu”. And regarding material construction, “the materiality – the very fabric of a place – is a product of society too” (2004, 30). He weaves this combination of materiality and meaning together saying, “Places are duplicitous in that they cannot be reduced to the concrete or the ‘merely ideological’: rather, they display an uneasy and fluid tension between them” (1996, 13). Constructivist thought had advocates who emphasized that landscapes were more than simply a representational medium. They constructed a distinctly non-representational perspective that emphasized the performative dimensions of the landscape. They held that understanding what is done in the landscapes is an essential component of understanding the landscape. The ‘doing’ in landscapes made them dynamic and served as their engine for change.

These cultural geographers instead pursue what is coming to be termed non- representational landscapes: in other words, landscapes that exist beyond humans and their dominant interpretive filters (particularly vision). These geographers suggest that landscapes may be understood as quite fluid constructs that are continually in the process of cohering and collapsing as we move through space. Thus rather than constituting fixed, static, material entities whose character is primarily visual, static, and predetermined, non-representational approaches see landscape as a sort of performance that is enacted much as is music or theater. This has broadened the focus on landscape beyond that ‘portion of the earth's surface that can be comprehended at a glance’ to include the non-visual, non-human, and relational. (Oakes and Price 2008, 151).

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Place, in the constructivist view, has the qualities of socially constructed meaning and materiality. By virtue of the dynamics of social construction, each place, in the particular sense, instantiates meaning and materiality in historically contingent processes that are never finished. The social construction of a place is a constantly evolving process. My research is strongly influenced by Cosgrove, Cresswell, and Duncan. I share their emphasis on the constructed nature of landscapes, the purpose of which was to embody meanings and values symbolically in landscapes; the need for fieldwork to identify the symbolic dimensions of landscapes; and the need for an intertextual approach to the interpretation of things found in the landscape. While I also share their convictions that power relationships are an important component of understanding landscapes, I do not make them a central element of my study.

2.4 - Postmodern

The most recent geographic school to develop theory on landscape and place has been postmodernism. Schein (1997) pulled together recent directions in this school holding that landscape was not one view but a multiplicity of views (discourses) that coexist, often contesting one another, in the same landscape. He identified the landscape as the “locus of articulated social relations” (Ibid., 676). He felt that the landscape disciplined the individuals who inhabited it.

Like ‘space’, the cultural landscape is produced and is ultimately implicated in the ongoing reproduction of social and cultural life. As part of that production, spatial relationships—distributions, partitioning, enclosures, circulation, division—serve as part of the dispersed disciplinary mechanisms of modernity, what Foucault calls ‘capillaries of power.’ (Ibid., 662)

In addition to disciplining inhabitants, Schein held that landscapes enabled the individuals who inhabited them. “Landscapes are always in the process of ‘becoming,’ no longer reified or concretized—inert and there—but continually under scrutiny, at once manipulable and manipulated, always subject to change, and everywhere implicated in the ongoing formulation of social life” (Ibid., 662). He held that a dialectical relationship exists between the disciplinary and enabling functions of landscapes and believed that the mechanism whereby this dialectic works its way out is ‘discourse.’ Schein defined ‘discourse’, here quoting Duncan, as:

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… shared meanings which are socially constituted, ideologies, sets of ‘common sense’ assumptions. Each discourse is a ‘social framework of intelligibility, within which all practices are communicated, negotiated, or challenged.’ (Ibid., 663).

He cautioned the interpreter to pay attention to the often unconscious “ordering of those discourses in terms of their centrality to any interpretation” (Ibid., 675). He felt that such ordering provided vital clues to the interpreter’s own preconceived views. Finally, he specifically argued against a set of cultural variables that could be generalized and reliably modeled from one landscape to any other. Many of these themes come together in postmodern theorization of globalization. Globalization draws attention to, among other things, the postmodern themes of routes rather than roots and hybridity born of heterogeneity rather than homogeneity. Massey’s widely published ‘A Global Sense of Place’ (1994) is perhaps the best-known single work pulling together these themes. By inviting us to join her on a stroll through Kilburn, she introduces us to both of these postmodern themes. Massey first introduces us to a variety of routes that find co-presence in Kilburn. We stroll with her past a newsstand offering a wide variety of Irish papers, notice that the two lottery winners this week have an Anglo and a Middle-Eastern name, and past an Indian shop selling saris. It is not that such broad collections of global routes have never come together before, but that they come together so routinely now, that makes globalization important. Never before has time-space compression, human mobility and remote communication, enabled the routine co- presence of such a broad array of geographic routes.

… what gives a places its specificity is … the fact that it is constructed out of a particular constellation of social relations, meeting and weaving together at a particular locus. … Instead, then, of thinking of places as areas with boundaries around, they can be imagined as articulated moments in networks of social relations and understandings, but where a large proportion of those relations, experiences and understandings are constructed on a far larger scale than what we happen to define for that moment as the place itself, … And this in turn allows a sense of place which is extroverted, which includes a consciousness of its links with the wider world, which integrates in a positive way the global and the local. (1994, 154-155)

Regarding the second theme, that of hybridity rather than homogeneity, Massey held that Kilburn was not a unitary identity but it had many identities and its full identity was a complex mix of those separate identities. She pointed out that this was also true in places less impacted by globalization suggesting, for example, that at a local level even a woman’s sense of place was 26 generally quite different from a man’s. The specificity of place “derives from the fact that each place is the focus of a distinct mixture of wider and more local social relations” (Ibid., 156); in other words, its unique hybridity. I concur with the postmodern position that many, probably most, communities are characterized by their hybridity born of heterogeneity. Improved mobility and remote communication, and the time-space compression they create, have given rise to this heterogeneity. This improved mobility and remote communications have provided many social and cultural benefits. For example, we now take for granted a selection of foods grown worldwide and shipped to our local grocery. I talk by telephone and chat by Internet with friends in New Zealand as if they were neighbors across the street from me. We benefit economically from the low costs for clothes made in other places, purchased on-line and paid for electronically, and shipped to our doorstep. Our vehicles run on oil, most of which originated in underground reserves half-a-world away. While globalization clearly offered many benefits, it was not universally celebrated. The mobility and remote communication that led to globalization and its attendant heterogeneity produced problems as well as benefits. For example, there have been environmental impacts from such high levels of mobility. The infrastructure costs of mobility, particularly roads, have drained funds from many other desperately needed infrastructure projects such as school construction. The drive for efficiency that fueled global capitalism has at times reduced local landscapes to a monotonous collection of efficient designs forming uniform landscapes and leading to places that lack significant cultural differentiation. The problems with globalization also had geographically related negative social consequences. At times it led to isolation in suburbs where residents did not know their neighbors, children and elderly lived far from schools and other social institutions, and the notion of ‘friend’ was reduced to who “friended” you on Facebook. (Relph 1976, Harner and Kinder 2011, Kunstler 2004, Kunstler 1993). My study takes the position that the typical heterogeneous communities in the United States spawned by globalization are places that do not meet the needs of those who move to Ave Maria. In order to meet their needs, they need a community with a high degree of cultural homogeneity that is ordered around the axis of conservative Catholicism. I argue, therefore, that the community provides an important window on homogeneous communities.

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In the next chapter I examine a new theoretical approach to landscape and place analysis developed by Anderson (2010). His synthesis of the strengths of the approaches reviewed above contributed to my methodology when applied to the study of Ave Maria.

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CHAPTER THREE

‘LANDSCAPE’ AND ‘DOMAIN-CENTERED’ COMMUNITIES

While the last chapter provided the broader geographical contexts of my study, this chapter synthesizes them into a contemporary approach suitable for understanding communities like Ave Maria. Further, this chapter integrates recent work from Etienne Wenger, a cognitive anthropologist, on purpose-driven, or domain-centered, communities called ‘communities of practice’ (1998). I argue in my study that Ave Maria is a community of practice and that Wenger’s theory provides valuable insight into the structuring and functioning embedded in the community’s geography. More recently, ideas in cultural geography have been woven together by Jon Anderson under the rubric of ‘places’ and ‘traces.’ He argues that places are the focus of cultural geography and that the study of traces identifies the complex matrix of cultures that occupy places (Anderson 2010).

3.1 - Places and Traces – the cultural geography of Jon Anderson

Strands of thought in many of the views of cultural landscape analysis presented in the previous chapter were woven together in the recent work of Anderson (2010). Anderson defined culture as:

… culture includes the material things, the social ideas, the performative practices, and the emotional responses that we participate in, produce, resist, celebrate, deny, or ignore. Culture is therefore the constituted amalgam of human activity – culture is what humans do. (Ibid., 3, italics in the original)

His concept of ‘doing’ extended to the emotional and non-representational dimensions of life. In that sense, Anderson addressed the emphases of humanistic and post-modern geographers. He was careful throughout his work to avoid the essentialism and quest for authenticity that was a central weakness of humanistic thought. He also pointed out that you cannot record, analyze, interpret or discuss, even with yourself, a non-representational event without representing it. He positioned himself saying, “This, therefore, is a more entangled and combinatorial cultural geography that is not non- or simply representational, it is to borrow

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Lorimer's useful phrase, a cultural geography that is 'more-than representational'” (Anderson 2010, 35). He did not view human ‘doings’ as acts without a relevant context. Anderson held that they occur in “a broader world that influences, values, celebrates, regulates, criminalises, sneers or tuts at particular activities and objects” (Ibid., 1). He argued that contexts influenced, and were influenced by, the ‘doings’ that occurred in them. He believed that an important component of cultural geography was acknowledging contexts, working out what produced them, and examining what effect they had on human ‘doings.’ He viewed human ‘doings’ and their contexts as a duality. The focus of his discussion of cultural geography and landscapes was through the lens of ‘places.’ These places were particular points where culture and context intersected. They were areas constructed by complex sets of marks, residues, and remnants of cultural life called ‘traces.’ Anderson, following Sauer, found the traces of cultural life the key analytical component of place. Like Cosgrove, his interest was in both the material and the immaterial traces which departed from Sauer’s near exclusive focus on the material.

In both material and non-material form, traces function as connections tying the meaning of places to the cultural groups that make them. Traces therefore tie culture and geographies together, influencing the identity of both. As a consequence of the constant production of traces, places become dynamic entities; they are in fluid states of transition as new traces react with existing or older ones to change the meaning and identity of the location. It is argued here, therefore, that places should be understood as ongoing compositions of traces. Cultural geography interrogates these traces, their interactions, and repercussions. It critically appraises the cultural ideas and preferences motivating them, and the reasons for their significance. (Anderson 2010, 5, italics in the original)

In accord with critical thought, he held that traces identified who belonged and who did not belong to a place. This he called geographical bordering. In accord with poststructural and postmodern views, he believed that traces embodied cultural meanings and values, indicated particular cultural preferences, and defined what a culture believed the world should be like. He called this cultural orderings. The first purpose of traces was to border space establishing it as particular places. Anderson described this purpose by turning to Agnew and Duncan’s (1989b) three characteristics of place - location, locale, and sense of place.

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The traces that bordered space carved a meaningful “place” out of Lefebvre’s “empty abstraction” of space. These geographical borders rooted cultural groups both geographically and socially establishing what Agnew and Duncan identified as the “location” component of place, the more ‘objective’ component. Cresswell (2004) pointed out that this was the most obvious component of place, all places have fixed objective coordinates on the earth’s surface. It was what made Tallahassee here and Miami there. The traces that bordered a particular place served more than a territorial function. The uniqueness of each collection of traces that formed a place, bordered that place from the generic place and from all of the other unique places. Anderson quotes Massey and Jess (1995) saying in part,

Places are unique, different from each other; they have singular characteristics, their own traditions, local cultures and festivals, accents and uses of language; they perhaps differ from each other in their economic character too; the financial activities of the City of London mould the nature of that part of the capital; the wide open fields of East Anglia give a particular feel that ‘it couldn’t be anywhere else. (Anderson 2010, 39)

Agnew and Duncan (1989a) identified this as the “locale” component of place, a component that provided the material context of day-to-day life. Anderson held that traces were more than simply ‘material’ marks, residue, and remnants of cultural life. Emotional, experiential and affective traces, traces in people’s lives left by their practices and performances, tied people through their individual identities to particular locales. They bordered the attachment people have to unique locations by establishing what Agnew and Duncan (1989a) identified as a ‘sense of place.’ Cresswell, in discussing Agnew and Duncan, described “sense of place” as “the subjective and emotional attachment people have to place. Novels and films (at least successful ones) often evoke a sense of place – a feeling that we the reader / viewer know what it is like to ‘be there’” (Cresswell 2004, 8-9). Crang (1998), quoted in Anderson, said

Approaches to 'place' have suggested the vital importance of a sense of belonging to human beings. The basic geography of life is not encapsulated in a series of map grid references. It extends beyond the idea of location .. . Crucially, people do not simply locate themselves, they define themselves through a sense of place. (2010, 40-41, quoted in Anderson and the emphasis were added by Anderson)

In other words, Anderson held that geographical context was essential to identity. The identity of a place, established through its traces, influenced those who resided there by 31

influencing “how we feel and respond, as well as coming to define how we think about the world, and where we belong” (Anderson 2010, 41). Reciprocally, who people understood themselves to be, which was more than simply the effect of their contexts, influenced the traces they constructed. People belonged to places and places belonged to people. The second purpose of traces was to order, or regulate, an area. As Anderson explained:

Traces can designate the 'home' place for material things, non-material attitudes, performative practices, and groups of people. When such traces are successful it becomes clear some activities, ways of life, actions, and languages are welcome in some places, but others are not. … The effect of traces like those … is that some activities and people are welcome and accepted in some places, but others are not. Places then are culturally ordered by traces. Signs, regulations and laws seek to create cultural order by ascribing some people and activities a sense of belonging, by disregarding or ignoring the claims of others. Importantly, however, this cultural ordering goes hand in hand with a geographical bordering. As traces order our sense of belonging, barriers, frontiers, walls and wire reinforce this order through physically imposing limits to movement, people, and places. This dual process of cultural ordering and geographical bordering occurs in all places at all scales, from prisons, to cities, to national frontiers. (Ibid., 41-44, emphasis in the original)

Cultural ordering became ideological as “the particular ideals and beliefs of one cultural group’ were ‘presented as ‘common sense’ for the entire society (Anderson 2010, 55). It became ‘doxa’ when it was so generally accepted that it was considered ‘natural’; ‘hegemonic’ when it is considered ‘orthodox’ or ‘normal’; and ‘transgressive' when it was ‘unorthodox’ or contrarian. Those who exercised dominating power through threat, manipulation, or simple acquiescence, held the hegemonic ideologies that culturally ordered a place. These ideologies were embodied in ‘normal’ or ‘orthodox’ traces. Signs such as “No Trespassing” and “Stay Off the Grass,” with their implied threats, were common examples. Those who exercised resistive powers held the transgressive ideologies that were embodied in ‘novel’ or ‘unorthodox’ traces. Street art and tagging were examples of transgressive traces. Anderson defined dominating power saying,

Dominating power is thus the ability to define what a culture considers to be normal and appropriate behaviour, the definition of basic notions such as right and wrong, what is acceptable or improper, what should be tolerated, and what should not. Dominating power creates systems of 'normality' that we all should conform with to be 'good citizens'. Through this conformity, these particular cultural preferences become less political and increasingly normal. As time goes on, these values don't seem like one point of view anymore; they come to seem like the natural course of things, the best way to be. This creation of cultural orthodoxy reaches it zenith when individuals can no longer imagine 32

any alternative to the cultural values they are conforming to. (Ibid., 56, emphasis in the original)

The alternative viewpoints, beliefs, and visions of contrarians constantly challenged dominant powers. Sometimes dominant powers permitted contrarian views as a means of diffusing them. The carnivalesque was an excellent example. “In the carnival, dominating power licenses dissent, therefore effectively turning a blind eye to some deviancy, in order that control is maintained in the long term” (Anderson 2010, 63). Sometimes dominant power adapted in light of the resistive power of contrarians. Sometimes a dominant power relinquished to resistant power. Even that which cultures regarded as ‘natural’ changed. Traces, according to Anderson, formed trace chains linking particular cultural orders across spatial and temporal borders. For example, the cultural values of capitalism led to traces such as private ownership of property. In Florida, this trace chained to the legal system. Private ownership of property was so important that public seizure of private property under eminent domain was one of two reason 12-member juries were empaneled, the other being capital crimes. The same system of cultural values, capitalism, led to the establishment of centers of public records, for example county courthouses, that preserved records of property ownership from one generation to another. Hence, across spatial and temporal boundaries, chains of traces embodied and reproduced persistent cultural orders. However, they were persistent orders, not immutable ones. As borders, orders, and advocates changed, so did the traces. Layer upon layer of traces and trace chains formed a record of the cultural groups that constructed a place. By studying the collective compositions of traces, geographers developed an understanding of the borders and orders that formed the ‘places’ with which these cultural groups identified, the people who were and were welcomed in them, and the meanings and values that were normative in them. Throughout my study, I generally employ Anderson’s approach to cultural geography. I adopt his views of both ‘place’ and ‘cultural traces.’ Following him, I analyze how cultural traces geographically border and culturally order Ave Maria. I examine how the town influences its residents and conversely how its residents influence the town. I view trace chains as intertextual linkages providing more complete understanding of the meaning and value of traces across temporal and spatial borders.

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3.2 - Community of Practice

Places are landscapes inhabited by communities that geographically border and culturally order them. While not all communities have places, at least in the material sense, all places have communities. Communities that occupy a place are organized in many different ways. Some communities are purpose driven. They have a central enterprise, or domain, around which they organize their activities. These are typically associated with vocational and learning communities. This is a useful model for organizing the cultural traces in Ave Maria. Wenger called this category of domain-centered communities ‘communities of practice.’ He defined communities of practice as “a way of talking about the social configurations in which our enterprises are defined as worth pursuing and our participation is recognizable as competence” (1998, 5). He focused specifically on developing the theory of these communities in his book, Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity, published in 1998. Domains, the organizing purpose of these communities, occurred at the day-to-day scale of the enterprise. The enterprise may have involved or had repercussions for scales beyond the day-to-day involvement of its members. However the common purpose of the community was established at the scale of the day-to-day functioning of the community. An interpretive tradition of established meanings called a repertoire provided the basis of the cultural ordering of these communities. Practice was the application and adaptation of the interpretive tradition to the novel circumstances of the present moment and the extension of the interpretive tradition through research. Knowing the interpretive tradition, applying it in novel circumstances, and advocating ways it should be meaningfully modified to meet new challenges were the hallmarks of competence that identified full members and that separated them from peripheral members who were not yet competent in the tradition. Communities of practice theory used the concept of repertoire to identify the collection of interpretive resources a community drew on. Those interpretive resources created the community’s “shared points of reference.” The elements of a repertoire fell into two broad categories. The first was reifications. Reifications were the products of a process that gave form to the interpretive tradition by congealing it into things. They provided the formalism that knowledge, the accumulated understanding of the meanings of a practice, needed to preserve against the ravages of time and circumstance. The second category of the repertoire was the performances focused on the reproduction of its interpretive tradition defined as ‘participations.’ Wenger defined participation as “the

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social experience of living in the world in terms of membership in social communities and active involvement in social enterprises. Participation in this sense is both personal and social” (1998, 55-56). He added, “It suggests both action and connection” (1998, 55) and described participation as “a complex process that combines doing, talking, thinking, feeling, and belonging” (Wenger 1998, 56). Participation provided the deep intuitive grasp that brought the knowledge of a community of practice to life. The community’s repertoire was a reservoir of knowledge and a collection of tried and true methods and techniques, an interpretive tradition, which equipped it to confront present circumstances in a coordinated fashion. The process of day-to-day applications and adaptations of the community’s repertoire to its present circumstances was the community’s “practice”. This concept of practice closely paralleled Thrift’s concept of performance. Thrift defined performance as the “art of producing the now” (Thrift 2000, 577). When a doctor listens to a heartbeat she is ‘practicing’ medicine. In that moment she brings together a tool that her interpretive tradition has developed for this purpose, the most recent information that she acquired last week while participating in a conference, and the skills she has personally developed by practicing this skill for years. She is focusing her interpretive tradition as a medical doctor in that moment through a performance wherein she is attentively listening to the beat of the heart of her patient. The negotiation of meaning interactively and recursively related the community’s repertoire to its practice. For example, when Europeans learned they could not sail off the end of the earth it changed their knowledge and understanding of the earth, which resulted in new practices. They tried sailing east to reach Asia. The practice of sailing east to reach Asia resulted in the discovery of lands previously unknown to them and resulted in changes to their knowledge and understanding of the earth. Through this iterative and recursive process the meaning of sailing and the practices of the sailing community were modified. Communities of practice theory is new and has not yet been extensively explored in geographic literature. Verma (2010) and Merriam et al. (2003) use it in relation to the education of witches and of Hindu priests in diaspora. Ibert (2007) uses it in a paper examining the role of knowledge in imaging the spatiality of innovation processes. None of these examine a place- based community such as Ave Maria. My research begins to fill this gap in the literature by examining both the repertoire and the practice of Ave Maria. However, the focus has been tightest on the community’s repertoire.

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I use communities of practice theory to provide a theoretical understanding of why and how the community in Ave Maria employs its cultural traces. The community in Ave Maria is a domain-centered community. Communities of practice theory usefully explains unusual aspects of the community’s cultural identity and the way those aspects are embodied in its cultural traces.

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CHAPTER FOUR

HISTORY AND THEORY OF METHODOLOGIES APPLIED IN MY STUDY

4.1 - The Mixed Methods Approach

Historically there have been two general categories of geographic methodologies; quantitative and qualitative approaches. The Dictionary of Human Geography (Johnston et al. 2000) defines quantitative methods as “The use of mathematical techniques, theorems, and proofs in understanding geographical forms and relations” (Barnes 2000b, 663). In the United States, quantitative geography, based largely on logical positivist and post-positivist theory and quantitative methodologies, emerged in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The quantitative approach is based largely on positivist epistemology foundations such as, “… cause and effect thinking, reduction to specific variables and hypotheses and questions; use of measurement and observation, and the test of theories” (Creswell 2003, 18-19). It is closely tied to formalism, the capacity to neatly express a problem in a system of logical and internally consistent variables that can be explored following an experimental methodology (Smith and Mark 2003, 412). In The Dictionary of Human Geography, Smith defines qualitative methods as, “A set of tools developed to pursue the epistemological mandate of the philosophies of meaning.” She later adds, “Qualitative methods are concerned with how the world is viewed, experienced and constructed by social actors. They provide access to the motives, aspirations and power relationships that account for how places, people, and events are made and represented” (Smith 2000, 660). Many qualitative facets of geography emerged in the latter half of the twentieth century. For example, in the early 1960s humanist geography emerged as, among other things, a critical reaction to the positivist orientation of quantitative geography. Radical geography and Marxist geography emerged in the 1960s as a critical reaction to social challenges that came sharply into focus in the 1950s and 1960s (Peet 1998). Qualitative methodologies emerged as a means to instrument some humanist, radical, and Marxist convictions as research methodologies. More recently social constructivist, some feminist, and a wide array of critical geographers have become strong voices in support of the qualitative approach. The epistemology of the qualitative approach is based largely on constructivist foundations such as, “ … multiple

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meanings of individual experiences, meanings socially and historically constructed, with an intent of developing a theory or pattern” (Creswell 2003, 18-19). The qualitative approach is tied to naïve symbol systems (particularly linguistic) employed in daily life that lack the neatness of formalism but gain from their messiness a far broader palate of expression. Schuurman points out ‘there is nothing in mathematical logic that makes it suitable to model human reasoning’ (2006, 730). In other words, human beings conceive of many things they cannot represent in formal logic or adequately express in mathematics. A mixed methods approach to research began with the recognition that there were various differing epistemological and ontological assumptions underlying qualitative and quantitative methodologies. However, instead of defining these as binaries, it viewed them as a duality. Dualities are two separate parts of one essential unity. The mixed methods approach viewed geographic research as the essential unity and quantitative and qualitative methodologies as the dualism. It held that in many situations the nature of the research made one of these methodologies more useful (Creswell and Clark 2007, 26). However, it often found situations where both types of data and methodologies were either necessary or useful. The convergence of analytical results from each supported more complete findings for the overall research (Creswell and Clark 2007, 27, Miller and Crabtree 2000, 619-620). According to Creswell and Clark, “The combination of qualitative and quantitative data provides a more complete picture by noting trends and generalizations as well as in-depth knowledge of participants' perspectives” (2007, 33). Pavlovskaya put it eloquently, “Whereas quantitative geographers have begun rethinking their epistemological privilege, nonpositivist geographers have expanded their methodological choice” (2006, 2006). My research adopts a mixed methods approach. In my first objective, I rely primarily on a qualitative method, grounded theory, to document and describe the socially constructed cultural traces and practices of Ave Maria. Grounded theory is more complex than a “working hypothesis” and less complex than a “grand scheme of things”. Through the systematic gathering and analysis of qualitative data, I am able to identify a complex assortment of material cultural traces and performances that embodied the religious beliefs central to the domain of the community. The strength of grounded theory and its qualitative context is that it allows me to tease out patterns from the imbroglios of those material cultural traces and performances. This lays the foundation for interpreting and theorizing about how Ave Maria, as a community of practice, used the meaning embodied in its geography.

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In my second objective, the cultural traces described as the culturally meaningful geography forming Ave Maria’s repertoire in my first objective are classified, analyzed, and visualized. My goal is to examine the spatial configuration of these material cultural traces and performances in order to understand how that configuration enhances, or detracts, from their focus on the community’s domain focus. I identify thirty-five material cultural traces and performances as geographically significant and classify them according to a GIS ontology. I use the quantitative GIS methods of spatial analysis to examine a category of this data for clustering and to estimate the geographic extent of their concentrations. I employed several other techniques to further characterize these traces. Morphogenetic techniques are used to assess the major functional units of the development. Space syntax is employed to characterize the linkages between these units. Space syntax also provides visual integration analysis of a “cultural district” identified through natural neighbor analysis. Spatial analysis extends my study beyond describing geographically significant elements of the repertoire of Ave Maria to exploring its spatial configuration. Thus, each of these methodologies builds upon another. This recursive process enables research that I believe would have otherwise been impossible or at least very weakened by exclusive reliance on either quantitative or qualitative methods alone. Using these methods together lays a solid foundation for the interpretation of some of the practice decisions made by the Ave Maria community.

4.2 - Grounded Theory

4.2.1 - History and Critical Context of Grounded Theory Grounded theory (GT) emerged as a qualitative approach in the mid-1960s. Its originators, Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss, published their work together as The Discovery of Grounded Theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967), a volume that emphasized systematic strategies for qualitative analysis. Grounded theory focused on developing theory from data rather than deducing testable hypothesis from existing theory (Charmaz 2006, 4). This approach relied on moving through iterative cycles of collecting, coding and comparative analysis of data. The goal of this iterative process was the emergence of categories that displayed theoretical cohesion, identified their internal properties and their external interrelationships to other categories, and developed progressively more refined theory to account for these properties and interrelationships (Glaser and Strauss 1967, 101-115). 39

Their approach enjoyed improved rigor over simple comparative analysis for the development of theory because it was grounded in the systematic coding of all relevant data and promoting its systematic assemblage and analysis. It enjoyed improved rigor over simple coding in that it allows the data to speak for itself rather than constraining it to pre-existing hypothesis and formal theoretical categories. GT, as developed by Glaser and Strauss, focused on the development of substance theory (which they view as specific to the empirical processes of the study) and formal theory (concepts that transcend the particular study and carry one into the broader disciplinary discourses) (Glaser and Strauss 1967, 21-43, Clarke 2003, 557-558). Cutcliffe summarized the approach saying, “Grounded theory both describes and explains the system or behavior under study and consequently is a methodology for developing theory that is grounded in data systematically gathered and analyzed. … They aim to discover patterns and processes and understand how a group of people define, via their social interactions, their reality.” (Cutcliffe 2000, 1477). I approach this portion of my research from the perspective of discourse analysis. Like text analysis, discourse analysis analyzes knowledges, attitudes, and points of view, (i.e. meanings) embodied in the construction of various objects and events. However, unlike text analysis, discourse analysis operates on the assumption that meaning is embodied for a reason, it is not neutral, it serves a purpose or purposes. Because they are purposeful, discourses compete to claim legitimacy and authority in a matter. “The particular grounds on which truth is claimed – and these shift historically – constitute what Foucault called a regime of truth” (Rose 2001, 144). The authority of the “legitimate” discourse becomes regulatory in that it “demarcates the boundaries within which people think or behave” (Watt 2005, 168). In doing so, it establishes what is regarded as natural, or taken-for-granted, in the world and it establishes a social construction of “difference”. A discourse’s claim to legitimacy is always open to challenge and hence has to be constantly negotiated with alternative discourses. The interplay of those negotiations constitutes the exercise of power and results in the establishment of “for the moment” legitimate truth or knowledge. In sum, my purpose in using grounded theory is to identify discourses, interpretive traditions, in Ave Maria embodied in the spatial aspects of its construction. The identification of these discourses equips me to analyze how space and place are employed to convey meaning in Ave Maria.

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4.2.2 - Methods in Grounded Theory GT research can be conducted in many ways. Most, however, rely on some or all of a ‘family’ of defining components. Charmaz (2006, 5-6) lists seven: 1) Simultaneous involvement in data collection and analysis; 2) Constructing analytic codes and categories from data, not from preconceived logically deduced hypotheses; 3) Using the constant comparative method, which involves making comparisons during each stage of the analysis; 4) Advancing theory development during each step of data collection and analysis; 5) Memo-writing to elaborate categories, specify their properties, define relationships between categories, and identify gaps 6) Sampling aimed toward theory construction, not for population representativeness; and 7) Conducting the literature review after developing an independent analysis. These components emphasize that the collection and analysis of data is an iterative and recursive process that enables the researcher to focus subsequent data collection around emerging theoretical categories (Corbin and Strauss 1990, 6). Initial analysis is interested in identifying concepts that connect the data. These concepts, one step removed from the data itself, are the basic units of analysis. The goal of data collection and analysis in constructivist GT is to seek meaning. According to Charmaz:

To seek respondents' meanings, we must go further than surface meanings or presumed meanings. We must look for views and values as well as for acts and facts. We need to look for beliefs and ideologies as well as situations and structures. By studying tacit meanings, we clarify, rather than challenge, respondents' views about reality. (Charmaz 2000, 525).

This search for meanings begins as soon as the researcher starts searching for data. Its on- going distillation into concepts subsequently informs future data production and analysis. The iterative cycles of data collection, analysis, and construction of concepts gradually distills into theoretical categories. GT is committed to multiple, partial, situated perspectives. It makes no effort to resolve all of its theoretical categories into a grand scheme of things. Rather, it focuses on the development of a coherent and meaningful explanation of the various perspectives at play in a particular situation. Methodologically that prioritization is expressed in its commitment to identifying multiple voices and discourses. One way this is operationalized is through an embrace of multiple sources of data. According to Corbin and Strauss:

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As in other qualitative approaches, the data for a grounded theory can come from various sources. The data collection procedures involve interviews and observations as well as such other sources as government documents, video tapes, newspapers, letters, books – anything that may shed light on questions under study. (Corbin and Strauss 1990, 5)

A common analytical methodology for distilling discourses from data is an iterative recursive process of open coding, memo writing, and selective coding. 4.2.2.1 - Open coding. This is generally the preferred method for the initial analysis of data. It involves “naming like phenomena with the same term” (Corbin and Strauss 1990, 7). It begins the process of analytical abstraction by fracturing and deconstructing the data. Methodologically, open coding involves defining, line-by-line, actions and events in narrative sources. This encouraged an inductive sense of the connections between the data sources and results in refining and specifying ‘sensitizing concepts.’ Each GT author has his/her own spin on the best way to make this initial coding of data. All agree it should begin at the outset of the study, and that the concepts developed should focus subsequent research. Refinement from codes to concepts continues the process of analytical abstraction through re-construction. “Categories turn description into conceptual analysis by specifying properties analytically …” (Charmaz 2000, 516). This generally involves various techniques of comparison. Charmaz summarizes it saying, “The constant comparative method of grounded theory means (a) comparing different people (such as their views, situations, actions, accounts, and experiences), (b) comparing data from the same individuals with themselves at different points in time, (c) comparing incident with incident, (d) comparing data with category, and (e) comparing a category with other categories” (Charmaz 2000, 515). 4.2.2.2 - Memo writing. Throughout the research process the researcher constructs memos. Charmaz identifies memo writing as “ … the intermediate step between coding and the first draft of the complete analysis” (Charmaz 2000, 517) though Strauss and Corbin argue for it as an ongoing component throughout the research (Corbin and Strauss 1990, 10). It is a system for keeping track of one’s thoughts. One writes memos concerning what data various codes are intend to identify; why one splits a code or category, unifies two, or removes one from the analysis; what one’s notions are concerning the emerging data (for example the great ideas that you have on walks that you either write down when you get home or you almost immediately forget), etc. According to Strauss and Corbin, “… theoretical memos provide a firm base for reporting on the research and its implications (Corbin and Strauss 1990, 10). Generally, memo writing is viewed as a meta-dialog of analytical abstraction, its usefulness 42

is almost universally acknowledged in the literature, and the specifics of its operationalization appear far less significant than that it is, in some form, done. 4.2.2.3 - Selective coding. Open coding is generally followed by ‘selective coding.’ A category that emerged in open coding that best explained, conveyed, and represented the main theme of the research is selected as the ‘core’ or ‘central’ category. ‘Subcategories’ that specified properties of the core category are also identified and further coding focuses on the core and subcategories. Selective coding is intended to be more conceptual, to account for most of the data, and to categorize large amounts of data both quickly and precisely. These selective codes serve as the foundations for analytical categories. As with other elements of GT, there are a variety of implementations of selective coding (Corbin and Strauss 1990, 14, Charmaz 2000, 516). Whether codes and concepts are new or sensitizing (disciplinary), each has to earn its way into the theoretical viewpoint that is developed for the study by repeatedly demonstrating its anchorage in the data and its relevance to the emerging theory. This assures the concepts and subsequent emergent theories are credible. As Corbin points out, the use of the term ‘credibility’ goes to believability rather than validity thereby sidestepping the issue of ‘truth.’ She personally avoids the use of validity and reliability because her orientation to GT is qualitative and the use of truth because she feels it is too dogmatic. “To me, the term ‘credibility’ indicates that findings are trustworthy and believable in that they reflect participants’, researchers’, and readers’ experiences with a phenomenon but at the same time the explanation is only one of many possible ‘plausible’ interpretations possible from data” (Corbin and Strauss 2008, 301-302). Her views reflect the views of most constructivist GT theorists.

4.3 - Geographic Information Systems

4.3.1 - History and Critical Context of Geographic Information Systems Historically, GIS was viewed as a means for implementing quantitative geography. It instrumented the analysis of empirical data and hypothesis testing in a relatively fast and interactive environment and permitted interpretive visualization of the results. Its results were useful to a wide range of sciences. It pushed geography’s concern for the spatiality of phenomena into mainstream science and, with GPS, the mainstream of ordinary life. I use several GIS techniques in a quantitative fashion to analyze the spatial clustering of several sets of features. I also use it quantitatively to develop a predictive surface indicative of the spatial extents of one of the sets of features. 43

Kwan (2008, 2008, 2007, 2006) is one of the most vocal advocates of more pluralistic and hybrid research methodologies in GIS. In recent years, she has written a series of articles exploring the ways in which feminist geography in particular and qualitative geographies more generally can usefully embrace GIS. She notes that quantitative data or methods, ‘seldom suffice to reveal what people perceive or experience in their everyday lives’ (Kwan and Knigge 2006, 2001). She does not reject the role of quantitative approaches, including those in GIS methodologies. However she points out that they are often inadequate in and of themselves. Kwan emphasizes the potential for the incorporation of qualitative data in GIS. She sees in GIS the potential for an effective means for qualitative representation of research. She has used time-geography several times as a means for representing the typical daily path of women (Kwan 2002a). She has also used a combination of time-geography and affective coloration to represent the affective experience of a Muslim woman in America following the September 11 attacks (Kwan 2008). She, along with others, advocates for the integration of such typically ethnographic data as photographs, videos, voice clips, and sketches into GIS to provide situated knowledge to contextualize other data (Pavlovskaya 2006, Kwan and Knigge 2006, Kwan 2002b, Sheppard 2001). There has been a great deal of recent interest in mixing qualitative, grounded theory- driven research with GIS (Kwan 2002a, Pavlovskaya 2006, Kwan 2008, Kwan and Ding 2008, Kwan 2007, Kwan and Knigge 2006, Crampton 2001). The documentation of multiple truths has been one goal in the multifaceted applications of GIS. LaDona Knigge and Meghan Cope (2006) explored the mixed methods utilization of constructivist GT and qualitative GIS visualization. They saw both GT and visualization as cultivating a study of a phenomenon from a variety of perspectives.

Overall, visualization techniques allow users to explore, interpret, and integrate data to provide a rich and flexible medium for data exploration. This suggests that visualization, indeed, has some commonality with grounded theory in its paths toward building themes inductively and in exploratory ways. … They enable, and, in fact, demand, researchers to query the data from multiple angles, ponder emerging consistencies or disjunctures, make new or revised connections, and entertain rival explanations. (Knigge and Cope 2006, 2027 -28)

4.3.2 - Methods in GIS I use GIS as a framework for spatially representing, processing storing, analyzing and reporting results from my data. Historically this has been done with paper maps however; my

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work is conducted digitally with computer systems. As Michael Goodchild points out, the impetus for the development of GIS was largely the challenges posed by map analysis of paper maps before map analysis was digitalized (Goodchild 2000, 301-302). Historically cartography represented data as points, lines, and polygons. These were vector representations. Points indicated locations without providing any sense of their extent. A map might represent an entire city as a point or a point might represent the location of a single person. Lines represented linear extent. A line may have represented a road between two towns. Polygons represented areal extent. An ocean or a country may have been represented as a polygon. With the advent of new technologies, including GIS, alternative forms of representing data have emerged. The most common alternative representation is called raster data. Conceptually, rasters can be thought of as grid cells with each cell holding a value of interest. Aerial photographs of land coverage are an example of raster data wherein each cells hold the value of a particular type of land cover. My research employs GIS to construct vector representations of data constructed from interviews and observations. Both quantitative and qualitative methods are employed in the analysis of the data. Point data represents the locations of places respondents identified as ‘important places’ as well as the locations of reifications. Quantitative measurements of spatial clustering and correlation are made with the data as well as a predictive surface that estimates the areal extents of areas that are likely to contain ‘important places.’ Overlays of non-point data, polygons representing the areas people assemble in for non-mobile participatory activities and lines representing the paths of mobile activities, enable the visual correlation of this data with the point data that I analyzed quantitatively. I also make limited use of raster data. Aerial elevation data obtained by LiDAR is used to examine the heights of buildings in the town center.

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4.4 - Morphogenetics

4.4.1 - History and the critical context of morphogenetics The morphological study of urban landscapes can be traced to a German scholar, John Fritz, in the early 1890s. Fritz, a high school teacher interested in medieval towns, began studying ground plans with an eye towards understanding the differences between East and West German towns. He speculated that the contrasts were the result of planning in the younger towns and “spontaneous growth” in the older towns. While his theory was later shown to be inaccurate, his articles on the use of ‘town layouts’ caught the attention of Otto Schluter. Schluter was interested in establishing geography as a unique scientific discipline. At the time of Schluter’s work, geomorphology was the most prominent field in geography - it provided a description of physical landforms. In pursuit of his goal he defined geography as the scientific study of landscapes (James and Martin 1981, 177, Whitehand 1981, 2), a scientific disciplinary focus that was not shared by any other discipline. Hence was born Landschafskunde (landscape science) which Schluter divided into Urlandschaft (original landscape), the landscape that existed before human induced changes, and Kulturlandschaft (cultural landscape), the landscape created by interactions with human culture.

In analogy to this Schluter now postulated a morphology of the "cultural landscape" (Kulturlandschaft) as the object of research in "cultural geography" (Kulturgeographie), for him the most important part of human geography. He called for the detailed description of the visible and tangible man-made forms on the ground and their genetic and functional explanation in terms of the aims and actions of man in the course of history and in the context of nature. From the beginning then he was not content with merely descriptive morphography but envisaged an explanatory morphology, being fully aware of the interdependence in geography of the three aspects of form, function and development (history). (Whitehand 1981, 2)

Schluter was interested in settlements, land utilization, and lines of communication as the objects of a systematic study of cultural landscapes. He divided settlements into urban and rural, establishing Stadtlandschaft (urban landscape) as the primary focus of urban geography. He focused on distinguishing, characterizing, and explaining urban landscapes (Whitehand 2007, ii- 02, Conzen 1978, 129) and followed Fritz’s lead in the use of ‘town layouts’ as a primary source of data.

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Schluter’s work formed the nucleus of an urban morphological approach to form, function, use, and locational configuration of urban landscapes in Germany prior to the First World War. During the interwar period, the German interest in urban morphology was intense and was shared by a growing circle of interdisciplinary and international practitioners. Comparative studies of the time, the favored format of urban morphological studies, were however often too broad and unfocused to be of significant use in understanding the development of urban form. The first significant theorist of the Anglosphere School was M.R.G. Conzen (referred to throughout as M.R.G. Conzen to distinguish him from his son, M.P. Conzen, a morphologist at the University of Chicago), a German trained geographer. His studies focused on geomorphology and urban morphology (Ibid., 7 - 9). When he emigrated to Britain in 1933, he studied for a career in town and country planning and practiced as a planner for four years. During that time, he became familiar with the form of the British town using surveys that identified land use, building use, building type, construction type, and floor-space concentration studies (studies that considered the floor space of the buildings multiplied by the number of floors). This data was assembled into a series of polychromatic maps that were then used for analysis (Ibid., 10). After the Second World War, he accepted an appointment in the Geography Department at King’s College, London. The combination of focused studies in geomorphology, extensive exposure to the classic urban morphology of the German school, and work as a planner laid a solid theoretical and practical foundation for M.R.G. Conzen’s research which resulted in 1960 in his major publication, Alnwick, Northumberland: a study in town-plan analysis. M.R.G. Conzen’s approach involved first deconstructing an area based on typing. Typing involved the identification of categories of relatively homogenous data. For example, buildings constructed during a particular period that displayed common architectural styles and construction approaches formed a building type because of their relatively homogenous functions and forms. Data was systematically typed and then reconstructed into islands of similarly typed areas. The reconstructed data was progressively generalized and assembled into “larger urban sub regions and ultimately the city as a whole” (Conzen 1978, 145). M.R.G. Conzen developed an additional concept in the Alnwick study that was important to this dissertation, the ‘morphological period’(Conzen 1960, 7-9) . He believed that social and cultural ‘periods’ exerted their influences on the material forms and uses in the cultural

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landscape. Whitehand showed that these periods were neither necessarily global nor synchronous (Whitehand and Carr 1999, 247, Whitehand and Carr 2001). The morphological period was augmented in his approach with the analysis of local economic and social factors (Conzen 1960, 7). The morphological periods and the local factors were analyzed as the forces that led to the evolution of the settlement landscapes.

Finally, it is important to realize that town plans originate, develop, and function within a physical and human context without which they remain incomprehensible. Therefore, plan analysis properly includes the evaluation of physical conditions of site and situation as well as of relevant economic and social development. The latter, indeed, provides the background for the interdependence of plan, building fabric, and land use, and the bridge between the morphological and the functional approaches in urban geography. (Conzen 1960, 5)

To add the dimension of time to his analysis, which elevated it from a strictly morphological approach to a morphogenetic approach, a series of cross-sectional analyses over an extended period were compiled. This panel analysis identified elements of the landscape that persisted, that died out, and that were modified by changes in use or density of development. Conzen’s study of Alnwick developed an evolutionary approach to urban analysis, a perspective growing out of the view that to understand a settlement one must understand the forces that shape its development allowing some forms to survive, some to adapt, and some to be extinguished (Whitehand 1981, 13, Conzen 1960, 9).

The reason for this is that a town, like any other object of geographical investigation, is subject to change. Towns have a life history. Their development, together with the cultural history of the region in which they lie, is written deeply into the outline and fabric of their built-up areas. When one period has achieved the manifestation of its own requirements in the urban pattern of land use, streets, plots and buildings, another supersedes it in turn, and the built-up area, in its functional organization as well as in its townscape, becomes the accumulated record of the town's development. (Conzen 1960, 6)

Urban morphology had some limitations and shortcomings. Perhaps the most severe was its vocabulary. This shortcoming appeared to be due to the interdisciplinary nature of the approach, an undue focus on descriptive classifications of form rather than explanation of the processes at work, and the preferences for distinctive languages among the principal schools of the approach.

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A second concern with urban morphology was its theory building powers. Positivists were concerned about “the empirical and inductive way of researching the city and point to the weak predictive powers of a theory of the city” while artistic and literary groups “distrust the single focus of urban morphology on the physical reality of the city” (Moudon 1997, 9). The shortcomings of the morphogenetic approach do not impact my research. The primary purpose of my research is to describe and explain potential linkages between worldviews and constructed landscapes. My intent is neither radically predictive nor critical in the sense of engineering a type of plan or design outcome. Further, predictive and critical facets that do arise in my study come into existence through the use of multiple methods that triangulate toward a general set of conclusions. My outcomes are less an artifact of my own solitary theorizing and more a product of multiple converging lines of evidence and description. 4.4.2 - Methods in morphogenetics The morphogenetic methodology encompasses a process of regionalizing a settlement landscape through the study of the function and form of its structures and spaces. Settlements are dynamic evolutionary processes that are responsive to economic and social influences inside and outside of individual settlements. Settlements embed these economic and social processes in the function and form of their structures and spaces. Analyzing these components permits the disaggregation of the settlement’s constructed landscape into various collections of areal areas or ‘landscape units’ and into historical periods of varying economic and social influence called ‘morphological periods.’ The areal areas identify the areas of homogeneity in the three dimensions of the landscape: length, width, and depth. The morphological periods identify homogeneity over successive historic periods by the study of a collection of cross-sectional studies. Changes in the areal areas are correlated to changes in the economic and social factors of each morphological period studied, and measured in terms of the buildings and uses that survived from the prior morphological period(s). The strength of analyzing this last dimension of morphology is it moves the model from a static analysis of what was simply “there” to a dynamic analysis of the evolutionary processes of settlement landscape construction. Since morphogenetics is typically used to study settlements that originated in medieval Europe and evolved organically over hundreds of years, a complex methodology to deconstructed a settlement’s functions, forms, and use has developed. I use a significantly amended approach in my research because Ave Maria is a planned development with few

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organic elements and it is of very recent construction. Therefore I am summarizing here only the key components of morphogenetic methodology. Morphogenetic analysis focuses most closely on the ground plan. The ground plan is a mapped representation of the settlement showing streets, plots, and block plans of the buildings. It is generally equivalent to a composite of contemporary cadastral, transportation, and planimetrics maps. Streets generally bound blocks and are arranged into street systems. Blocks are composed of improved and unimproved plots bounded by streets. Buildings constructed for similar functions and during similar periods in a block typically display similar plot characteristics such as coverage area and setbacks from property lines. By studying these characteristics the ground plan can be decomposed into relatively homogenous units. Morphogenetic analysis also decomposes settlements around land use. M.P. Conzen describes land use patterns as arising from different societal needs for specialized uses of ground in varying sizes, shapes, and locations. He suggests that due to the ease with which land use transitions from one category to another its analysis breaks down when made strictly along functional lines (Conzen 2001, 145). The association of individual components into islands of generally similar types permits the reconstruction of the layer into “land use units” (Whitehand 2009, 11). A third component, building fabric, is also analyzed in the morphogenetic approach. The building fabric is an analysis of building use and design. According to M.P. Conzen, “The building fabric is recognizable in two fundamental dimensions, as a set of functional building types, such as residences, factories, shops, and as set of structures built in different architectural styles, such as Federalist, Italianate, Queen Ann, and gothic, depending on historical incidence of fashion” (Conzen 1978, 151). These are arranged into building form units. Just as M.R.G. Conzen conceived of a hierarchy in the deconstructive analysis of the settlement landscape, he conceived of a hierarchy in its analytical synthesis, or reconstruction, into regions. As one progressed from the smallest and most homogeneous regions, morphotopes, to broader sub-regions and regions one moved to progressively larger and more heterogeneous areas (Whitehand 2009, 9). In this way he emphasized the level of general coherence within regions at different scales. Urban morphology and morphogenetics benefits from recent technological advances. In the past morphogenetics relied upon labor-intensive methods to generate and analyze landscapes. Moudon (1997) advocates the importance of GIS to this approach. She suggests not only its

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usefulness in reducing the labor intensity of the approach but of its potential to meaningfully “link spatial attributes to quantitative data so that, for the first time, physical space can be measured and analysed in relation to the socio-economic forces that shape it …” (Moudon 1997, 9). Lilley (Lilley et al. 2005) advocates the combined use of GPS in the conduct of fieldwork and GIS in the conduct of analysis of morphological features and characteristics. M.R.G. Conzen emphasized the analysis of the agency of social and economic influences on the morphogenetic development of settlements (Conzen 1960). According to M.P. Conzen, studies of social and economic contexts have focused in three areas (Conzen 1978, 158-163). Cultural-historical studies focus on how the culture of an observer influences the landscape the observer sees. Aesthetic studies focus on how the landscape influences the observer’s emotional experience of the landscape and focuses on the observer’s sense of ‘spatial satisfaction’ with the landscape. Cognitive studies focus on the pieces of the landscape that the observer can cognitively recall, typically through mapping. The piece that seems to me generally missing from these morphogenetic studies is the analysis of social and cultural influences on constructed landscapes. There are a few standout exceptions to this general omission. Duncan’s study of the city of Kandy (Duncan 1990) addressed the influences of Buddhist and Hindu views on the construction of the city of Kandy in Sri Lanka. He developed a textual analysis of key discourses in those religious viewpoints. Then he showed how those discourses influenced the construction of the town through the intertextual application of his discourse analysis to the morphogenetic analysis of the settlement landscape. Lilley followed essentially the same approach and methodology in addressing the social influences of Christianity on the form and function of medieval settlement landscapes (Lilley 2004a, Lilley 2004b, Lilley 1994). Other morphological and morphogenetic studies address, in varying degrees, the impacts of social influences on the form and function of settlement landscapes. However, they tend to do so largely without discussion of the methodology used to identify those sociological dimensions.

4.5 - Space Syntax

4.5.1 - History and critical context of space syntax Space syntax emerged as an alternative morphological approach in the 1970s. It is based on awareness that those morphological elements that contributed to movement and association can be represented as lines and nodes, and analyzed using graph analysis. It focuses on how the

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space that serves as the matrix for settlement construction is related to the social spaces people require to move and associate. It studies accessibility by focusing on spatial configuration. The open public space of a settlement functions as an interface between those who dwell in the settlement, the domain of inhabitants, and the world outside, the domain of strangers. Spatial integration is space’s generative mode allowing new relationships, ideas, products and knowledges to emerge by maximizing encounters between inhabitants and strangers. Spatial segregation is space’s conservative mode, promoting the preservation of existing relationships, ideas, and knowledge by maximizing encounters between inhabitants, and minimizing encounters between inhabitants and strangers (Sailer et al. 2012). Through spatial configuration, settlements create open areas with varying degrees of spatial integration and segregation, and varying degrees of availability to inhabitants and strangers. Hillier and Hanson (1984) found that, “How this interface was handled seemed to be the most important difference between one type of settlement and another …” (Hillier and Hanson 1984, 17). Accessibility is a measure of how the interface handles the availability of a particular space relative to the availability of all similar public spaces in a settlement. Open public space providing availability to various sites in a settlement happens by design. Buildings are not placed randomly. This is apparent whether studying them from above (for example with a plan map) or from below (by moving between them). There are restrictions on their placement. Restrictions on building placement create networks of open public space that make particular spaces available to varying degrees. The strength of space syntax is it use of a collection of techniques to translate spatial configuration, the relationships among individual open spaces to the whole network of open spaces, into formal space and then analyzes those relationships. Accessibility to a particular space is assessed in terms of how the movement potential and visibility fields of the whole settlement make the particular space available to insiders and outsiders. The underlying theory of space syntax is that the configuration of spatial systems can be represented as links and nodes and analyzed as graphs. In this analysis, the distance between each link and every other link in the network is counted. The links are weighted to account for differences in key properties of the spatial system being analyzed. Among the earliest weighting systems was a linear distance cost. People often think of transportation cost in terms of linear distance, i.e. ‘How many feet from A to B?’ or ‘How many miles from A to B?’ More recently,

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the total number of “turns made” and the total amount of “angular change” in routes have also weighted links. The formalization of space following those procedures allows for the identification of spatial structures that link social and spatial worlds (Vaughan 2007, 207).The configuration of linear open public space between buildings and parcels promotes particular types of ‘movement.’ The convex open spaces promote ‘association’ through co-presence. The ‘visibility’ created by the configuration of linear and convex open spaces permits orientation and navigation, which also promotes movement-to, movement-through, and association in various areas. According to space syntax theory, movement is rarely random in settlements. Therefore, most movement can be broken into two components. The first is origin-destination pairs, the places travelers start from and the places they want to go to, which is called ‘to-movement.’ People move from an origin ‘to’ a destination. The second component is the space they must pass through to get from their origins to their destinations. This is called ‘through-movement.’ Over time people travel to more near than far destinations., “… so if some locations are in some sense ‘nearer’ to all locations within a certain radius than others, …, this will give these locations greater potential as destinations than others, simply by virtue of having easier accessibility” (Vaughan 2007, 213). To-movement is a measure of the nearness of a space to all other spaces in a network. In space syntax, the to-movement metric is called ‘integration.’ The metric is not identical to ‘closeness’ as measured mathematically because it is slightly modified to adjust for the effect of the number of elements in the system (Hillier and Hanson 1984). The higher a space’s integration value, the nearer it is to all of the other spaces in the network and the more likely it is to be selected as a destination. There are documented social consequences to the differences in spatial configuration captured by space syntax (Vaughan 2007, Vaughan et al. 2005, Hillier et al. 1996, Hillier and Vaughan 2007). “They show that by clarifying space in a particular way the social origins and consequences of the spatial patterns can be brought into clear view” (Vaughan 2007, 208). For example, highly integrated spaces, generative spaces, are developed with commercial uses because their accessibility makes them highly desirable as destinations. Most businesses, particularly retail and services, benefit from locations that are highly accessible and that promote interactions. Areas that are less accessible, conservative spaces and hence more spatially segregated as reflected by a lower integration value, tend to be developed for residential uses (Vaughan 2007, Hillier 2009). “By looking at space in this way, we can begin to see both how

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social and cultural patterns are imprinted in spatial layouts, and how spatial layouts affect functioning” (Vaughan 2007, 211). 4.5.2 - Space syntax methods and data Space syntax quantifies spatial configuration by first defining the network of spaces in a settlement using geometric representations including lines, convex spaces, isovists, or points. The social processes the investigator deemed relevant govern the selection of a representation. For example, analysts often use lines to study patterns of movement and isovists to study intervisibility. After the network is defined using a geometric representation it is converted to a matrix, translated to a graph, and then analyzed using non-metric measurements of the underlying patterns (Hillier 1999). For instance, a street network can be defined using the longest and fewest straight lines (least line definition) that can be drawn through the system creating a map of interlocking straight lines (or vectors). Those vectors can then be converted to a formal definition using a matrix that identifies their endpoints as X,Y coordinate pairs. Each of these formally defined vectors is translated into elements in a graph identifying the junctions as links and the vectors as nodes. Finally, the graph is analyzed using a variety of measures and metrics. 4.5.2.1 - Line Analysis In line analysis, lines are used to convert open public space to links and nodes. A “least line map” is constructed by drawing a network of the fewest possible interconnecting lines through an analytical area. Then they are weighted and the weighted estimates of distance are analyzed to determine which links are, overall, ‘closest’ to all the other links in the system. These closest links are the most ‘integrated’ links. As mentioned above, these links are variously weighted. I use a geometric cost estimate called “least angular change”. My dissertation uses this method because studies indicate it is the preferred method of navigation for people (Vaughan 2007, Hillier 2009, Hillier and Iida 2005, Hillier et al. 2007). In calculating the integration metric based on the least angular change measure, travel cost is based on how many net degrees of change in a route’s direction are required to travel from an origin segment to each destination segment. The shortest path is the one that optimizes this distance by returning the least angular change in path.

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Figure 4-1 Two methods for computing travel costs from Point A to Point B are compared. Empirical studies conclude that people usually follow the path with the lowest angular cost

Figure 4-1 illustrates the difference between cost based on least angular change compared to distance based on linear distance. Route 1 makes a single 90-degree turn and travels a linear distance of 36 feet. Route 2 makes three turns constituting a net 225-degrees of angular change but travels a linear distance of only 28 feet. Empirical studies indicate that people generally choose Route 1, even though it has a longer linear distance, because it involves a lower net angular change in route.

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A study by Hillier and Iida indicates that integration metrics based on angular measurement explain approximately 70% of the differences in the gate counts of actual travelers. This holds true in both vehicular and pedestrian movement in several regions of London (Hillier and Iida 2005). The study supports prior findings of a correlation between measurable properties of movement networks and gate counts. It enhances those findings by identifying the important role angularity plays in movement decisions. The study concludes that total angularity is a better predictor of movement than either metric distance or number of turns. The space syntax literature conclusion is that while we typically think abstractly of travel cost as linear distance, we typically choose actual routes by least angular change. Since the least angular change measure of transportation costs, combined with the integration metric, is highly correlated with actual gate counts, it is a useful method for identifying core destination areas, highly generative areas allowing new relationships, ideas, products and knowledges to emerge by maximizing encounters between inhabitants and strangers, in the development (Vaughan 2007, 215, Hillier 2009, 12, Hillier and Iida 2005, 484). 4.5.2.2 - Segment Line Analysis Segment line analysis begins with the development of a least line definition of linear open space. This is often as obvious and straightforward as a road network. Once this least line map, or in space syntax parlance “axial line map,” is constructed, each line or road is fractured into segments between intersections. These road segments are identified as nodes and the intersections were identified as links (Vaughan 2007, 215). Some studies indicate this fracturing significantly improves the accuracy of deriving the most integrated spaces in a network (Vaughan 2007, Hillier and Iida 2005). This made sense in light of the modified areal unit problem because it further disaggregates the data. Syntactic analysis of segment maps produce “two kinds of output: alphanumeric data in the form of line numbers with spatial parameters assigned to each; and graphic data in the form of 'core' maps in which lines are coloured up in accordance with their value on the various parameters” (Penn et al. 1993, 36).

Values in the Hiller and Hanson Integration Metric (IHH) approaching zero indicated very low levels of integration. They are, on average, ‘far’ from all of the other segments in the network. Conversely, values approaching one indicate very high levels of integration. They are, on average, ‘close’ to all of the other segments in the network. Since people travel more often to ‘close’ locations than to ‘far’ locations, the highly integrated spaces are those where you would

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expect the most traffic, most commercial activity, most strangers to the community, and the most random interactions among people to be. Those tend to be the social cores of communities. Core maps are colored-up using a color spectrum consistent with white light extending from high values at the red end of the spectrum to low values at the violet end of the spectrum. In black and white representations, the black end of the spectrum represent high values and the light-grey end represent low values. The mapping representations, which are more crude than the alphanumeric, benefit from being readily accessible to human pattern recognition abilities and from being naively accessible. 4.5.2.3 - Visual fields Visual information plays a key role in many dimensions of our lives. As examples, when driving we navigate by it; when picking a domicile or residence we visually inspect the premise before completing the transaction; and in courtroom testimony the recollection of it is still considered key evidence. Between 80% and 90% of the information we process is reported to be visual with our brains processing 36,000 visual images per hour (Jensen 2008, 55). Artists, architects and mathematicians may have first pursued the academic study of visual information. In the late 18th Century social theorist Jeremy Bentham exploited it as a source of power by developing the panopticon, a type of prison design that utilized fields of vision to regulate prisoners. In that design, guards in a central tower can see into every cell in the prison but prisoners can only see out to the guard tower. By obscuring the windows of the guard tower the prisoners never know when the guards are actually watching them. By the late 1960s, the analysis of visual fields was formalized into the notion of ‘viewsheds.’ C. R. V. Tandy is credited with defining and coining the term ‘isovist.’ “An isovist, or viewshed, is the area in a spatial environment directly visible from a location within the space” (Turner et al. 2001, 103). It is an analysis of intervisibility that identifies which spaces can see, and can be seen by, a stationary viewer at a particular observation point. Turner (2001, 1999) was the strongest advocate for modifying isovists and incorporating them into space syntax. Isovists as conceptualized by Tandy included a point representing the position of the viewer and a polygon identifying the viewshed of the viewer. Turner modified the isovist by converting it from a geometric representation to a graph representation, which he identified as visibility graph analysis, or VGA. Turner created his VGA by laying a grid of observation points over a spatial environment and creating an isovist from each point. He then related each isovist to the global collection of isovists creating the “visibility graph”.

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Visibility graphs generate a host of metrics suggesting the ways visibility contributes to movement. One of those is the integration metric. Visual integration analyzes, on average, how many visual steps any point is from every other point in the system using the shortest path between points. According to Turner, “the idea was that all possible occupiable locations within the built environment would be categorized by their visual relationships to other occupiable spaces through a continuous map” (Turner 2004, 2). This can be a difficult concept; however, it is not without a complementary experiential referent. Waypoints are a common way of navigating. Starting from a known position you would look as far along a winding road as possible. You do not worry if the road cuts back out of view. You are only interested in the farthest point you can see down the road. You mark that spot in your mind and drive to it. When you get there you have reached your first waypoint. Directions might indicate that the cutoff to someone’s home is just a bit after the second waypoint. In a sense, a visual step is a waypoint. The integration metric is an analysis of how close each point in the plan is to every other visual point in the plan if you followed the shortest path of waypoints. When people are visually navigating an area, a location with a high integration value is one people tend to travel-to, a generative space that is often a destination. 4.5.2.4 - Visibility Graph Analysis Visibility graph analysis begins by constructing a plan of what can be seen and from where. This is accomplished by creating an analytical layer that has solids viewed at a particular height clipped. In other words, if an analysis is from the perspective of the eye level of a 6-foot tall person, then park benches and similar lower items are not clipped but buildings are clipped. This constructs a plan of the open space in the area of analysis. Once the plan is developed a grid of points is overlaid on it. A graph is subsequently made connecting each point to every other point it can see. The density of the grid point overlay requires a judgment call on the part of the analyst who has to balance the computational demands of the grid against the level of resolution the grid offers. For example, a course grid may not identify a visual path between two buildings that a finer grid will identified. However, a finer grid will require significantly greater computing resources and will created a significantly larger graph file. As with line analysis, the output from the syntactical analysis of the visibility graph includes both alphanumeric output and core area maps that are colored up according to levels of visual integration.

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4.6 - Implications for My Research

I instrument my commitment to both objective and subjective positionalities by employing a mixed methods research design. I use grounded theory, a qualitative methodology, to document, describe, and understand the religious beliefs that form the domain of the community and the cultural traces that embody that domain. I use two forms of morphology, morphogenetics and space syntax, to analyze the spatial configuration of the cultural traces. I use GIS as both a qualitative and quantitative methodology to explore the spatial relationships among features.

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CHAPTER FIVE

METHODS – OBJECTIVE 1

In this chapter, I outline the methods I use to address my first objective. The objective is to document and describe the religious beliefs that form the domain of the community and the cultural traces that embody that domain. I particularly focus on grounded theory (GT) as the qualitative method.

5.1 - Grounded theory data and methods in the context of Ave Maria

The key qualities of data for this portion of the study are that they be both meaningful (embodying attitudes, points of view, and perspectives) and that they address the co-constitutive relationships between the symbolic dimensions of the town’s material construction and the worldviews of the town’s stakeholders. These are, to my mind, streams of cultural data. Other data streams, for example economic and political streams, are considered when they clearly influence these core cultural streams. My study includes data from interviews and surveys; observations in-situ; documents such as magazines, newspaper articles, and planning documents; and visual materials such as statues, decorations, architecture, and similar iconography. In the selection of persons to interview and data to collect, I follow GT sampling guidelines.

5.2 - Semi-structured Interviews and Surveys

Interviews are a core data source for this portion of the study. Interviewing involves a dialog between the interviewer and the informant. 5.2.1 - Schedule design There is a broad spectrum of interview techniques acceptable in qualitative research (Dunn 2005, Valentine 2005). I use a semi-structured interview technique along the lines described by Dunn:

Semi-structured interviews employ an interview guide. The questions asked in the interview are content focused and deal with the issues or areas judged by the researcher to be relevant to the research question. Alternatively, an interview schedule might be prepared with fully worded questions for a semi-structured interview, but the interviewer would not be restricted to deploying those questions. The semi-structured interview is organized around ordered but flexible questioning. (2005, 88)

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The bulk of the interviews I conducted (see Appendix A for a complete copy of the interview form) involved questions to establish the informant’s attitudes, points of view, and perspectives on faith and how they found those embodied in Ave Maria. While my study is interested in exploring the embodiment of meaning in the cultural traces, the definition of cultural traces was not restricted to material traces. Social aspects, particularly performative, were also intentionally sought in interviews. The qualifying questions regarding residency and age were asked at the opening of the interview. Next the interview was designed to capture most of the descriptor data and data about general attitudes towards the town. This included questions on length of residency in Ave Maria, influences that brought the informant to Ave Maria, the informant’s current religious faith, and whether the informant was raised in their current faith. Questions about desired additions the informant wanted to see in Ave Maria and the informant’s age group were reserved until the end of the interview. The question about things the informant would like to see added was quickly modified on-site. The question originally asked, “What totally new things would you like to see added to Ave Maria so that it more completely reflects your personal faith?” One of the earliest informants was an agnostic/atheist who didn’t want anything added to “more completely reflect” his faith. Early on several other respondents replied that they did not want new things for reasons of faith but they did want new things for matters of social convenience (i.e. a gas station). The question was shortened to ask “What totally new things would you like to see added to Ave Maria?” In addition, respondents were asked to identify on a map places in Ave Maria that were important to them in terms of their day-to-day lives. Their responses are referred to throughout this study as the ‘important places’ data. The question was asked prior to any religiously oriented questions to avoid biasing a religious response. The mapping data was subsequently transferred to a GIS and analyzed. The majority of the interview was designed to capture a second type of data. These questions explored the informant’s attitudes and perspectives on faith and how they found these aspects of their faith embodied in Ave Maria. This category included questions asking the informant to identify the most important aspects of their faith, what their faith teaches about ‘holy’ or ‘sacred’ places, whether they think of Ave Maria as a whole or any particular parts of

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Ave Maria in particular as holy or sacred, and the role of monuments in both their faith and in Ave Maria. Respondents were given a list of religious sites and performances in Ave Maria and asked to rank them on a five-point scale from “Very Important” to “Not at all Important” with an additional category for “Negative Aspect of Community.” This scale was modified slightly as it became obvious that there was insufficient distinction between the fourth category, “Unimportant” and the fifth category, “Not at all Important.” These categories were subsequently combined into one category, “Unimportant.” Respondents were also invited to add additional sites or performances they felt I should have included but missed and to rank them. A surprising number of informants added the Rosary Walk on the Ave Maria University campus and mass at Donahue Academy (the private school) to the aspects of the community they felt should be ranked. When the survey form was developed late in the study these categories were added to the form. 5.2.2 - Permissions to Interview It was necessary to obtain permissions to conduct research in Ave Maria, including permission to conduct interviews in the town. This was challenging because, unlike incorporated towns, there are no publicly owned areas of Ave Maria. The developers, stewardship community district, community association and university essentially own the land and improvements of the town. The homebuilder owns much of the vacant residential land and land containing model homes and spec homes and individual homeowners own their private residences. To obtain permission to conduct research in Ave Maria, I contacted the university and the developer via Barron Collier Companies. Both graciously welcomed the project and permitted me broad access. In addition, the university allowed me to stay in their conference center lodging. That significantly increased the time I was able to spend in Ave Maria. Since my research involved human subjects, I was also required to obtain permission from the Human Subjects Committee of Florida State University’s Institutional Review Board (IRB). The IRB required an interview protocol. The protocol for my study included a consent form that had to be reviewed with the informant and signed by the informant before the interview began. An interview schedule showing the questions that would be asked during interviews was the second element of the interview protocol. And a debriefing form to be provided to the respondent after the interview was completed overviewing the research and providing the respondent with contact information for the university and for local counseling centers was the

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third element. Further, the study was restricted to persons over eighteen years old to avoid additional IRB regulatory requirements for interviewing minors. 5.2.3 - Consent Form The consent form briefly describes the research and identifies any foreseeable potential negative impacts the research might have on the informant. It also reviews the procedures that protect the information and identity of the informant. It specifies that the informant will only be directly quoted with their consent (which required a separate additional signature). When they are directly quoted they will be referred to only by anonymous initials. Otherwise, references to their responses will appear as aggregated data. The consent form, which contains their actual name and signatures, is separated from the remainder of the interview form and that the consent form and interview form are maintained in separate places. Access to the original data is restricted to the IRB and the dissertation committee. Finally, it states that the interview and consent form will be destroyed at the end of the IRB mandated retention period. Copies of the consent form, interview schedule, and debriefing form are included in Appendix A. The consent form indicated the interview takes approximately thirty minutes. In fact, thirty minutes was adequate in the test runs I made for administering the interview while at FSU before leaving for the field. However, it quickly became apparent that many of the informants preferred to offer longer and more complex answers. Therefore, I modified this information in the field by mentioning to informants when we were at the thirty-minute mark and asking if they wanted to continue the interview. All of those who reached the thirty-minute mark were willing to extend the interview. 5.2.4 - Sampling Grounded theory samples for information density. The focus is on theory development and not on verification of causal relationships among variables. This is ‘purposeful sampling.’ Creswell advises that in making a purposeful sample one should “intentionally select participants who have experience with the central phenomenon or key concept being explored” (Creswell 2003, 179-190, Creswell and Clark 2007, 112). I used criteria and chain sampling to recruit informants. Criteria sampling involves selecting all cases that meet some criteria (Bradshaw and Stratford 2005, 72). The criteria for the study were that the informant: 1) lives in or is planning a move to Ave Maria; 2) is not in Ave Maria solely as a student at the University; 3) is at least eighteen years old. The first two criteria

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assured the informant was a stakeholder in Ave Maria. The last criterion addressed the IRB concern regarding human research on minors. Originally I planned to make initial contacts with potential informants in a large forecourt in front of the Oratory as residents were leaving Mass and as visitors browsed. Respondents who were willing to be interviewed would then be qualified using the above criteria to determine their suitability to the study. One of the unexpected developments that I discovered when in the field was that The Annunciation, a relief statue for the front outside wall of the Oratory, was being installed. The heavy equipment needed to make the installation occupied a significant portion of the area where I planned to intercept people as they left worship. The installation began several days before the commencement of my fieldwork and continued several months after its conclusion. This was a disadvantage in that throughout the period of fieldwork worshippers left the Oratory through side exits, making it difficult to meet them. However, it also served as an advantage in that people gathered in the mornings and evenings to view the progress of the installation. This provided a natural opportunity to meet people and schedule interviews at later times. Each day I went to Mass and after a week several of those who regularly attended started asking about my work and agreed to be interviewed. Throughout the day, I also met those who were working in the town center of Ave Maria, most of whom owned their own businesses. After I became a familiar sight around town a number of them agreed to be interviewed. Several residents who were shopping in the town center also agreed to be interviewed. In addition, I met several respondents at the various events I participated in during the period of fieldwork. Midway through the study I began going door-to-door in residential neighborhoods and met several respondents. At the conclusion of each interview I would ask the informant, based on his/her experience of the interview, for the names of others she/he felt would be useful for me to interview. This form of chain sampling was surprisingly effective in that it led to a number of information rich interviews with acquaintances of prior informants. In addition to the complication presented by the installation of the Annunciation, recruiting informants was complicated by three other unanticipated factors. I had made an initial visit to Ave Maria in the middle of January 2010 to evaluate its suitability for the study. At the time there were quite a few people wandering the streets throughout the day. Some were tourists and others were prospective residents. Based upon that trip I had concluded that I would be able

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to interview not just residents but also prospective residents for the study. During the fieldwork there was a nearly complete absence of both tourists and prospective residents. I learned that this is because Ave Maria has a ‘season’ from just after New Year until just before Easter during which most tourists and prospective residents visit. My hope of studying prospective residents was therefore unrealized. The second factor had to do with the actual number of residents in Ave Maria to interview. The projection for Ave Maria was 11,000 residences over ten years, from 2006 to 2016, in two periods. The first period was from 2006 to 2010 with a projection of 6,010 residences (Board of County Commissioners of Collier County, Florida 2005Table 21-1). However, the actual number of residences constructed was estimated at 387, of which 303 were believed to have been sold. In other words, less than seven percent of the projected houses had been constructed and about five percent were actually sold. Further complicating this was the impact of the ‘season’ mentioned in the first factor. Out of the 303 residences sold, approximately 175 were permanent year-round residents that were likely to have been in town during the period of fieldwork. The third factor that influenced the number of informants recruited was wariness on the part of many potential informants. The town of Ave Maria has been the subject of numerous media articles (including magazine articles, newspaper articles, documentaries, news reports, and blogs). Based on their experiences with the reporters who wrote these articles, there is a general fear among residents that things said to reporters will be taken out of context. Apparently an academic with a clipboard and a tape recorder looks surprisingly similar to a reporter. It took almost a week of regular interaction with residents, and discontinuing the use of the clipboard and tape recorder, to establish enough credibility to conduct the initial round of interviews. I altered my method of collecting information in light of these factors by discontinuing efforts to record interviews and interviewing over tables that provided a solid place for me to summarize informants’ responses and record in writing their quotes on the interview forms. In my opinion, the difficulty of recruiting informants was heightened by the process of reviewing the consent form and asking for their signatures before the interview. Several residents declined to be interviewed when I first presented the consent form. However, once the consent form was reviewed it appeared to ease the concerns of many who did become informants and I believe led to more information rich interviews with those who became informants.

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5.2.5 - Interviewing Procedures Each interview began with a review of the consent form. When the consent form was reviewed and signed, I asked the descriptor questions. The people who elected to participate in the study seemed familiar with these types of questions. Asking them established a rapport with the respondents. While my interview schedule formed a general interview strategy, I did not feel constrained to adhere strictly to it. Following Dunn, I viewed my role as that of an interventionist.

In semi-structured forms of interview the role of the researcher (interviewer or facilitator) is recognized as being more interventionist than in unstructured interviews. This requires that the researcher redirect the conversation if it has moved too far from the research topics. (Dunn 2005, 88)

When the conversation took a promising detour, I was comfortable following the thread of it. However, when it seemed the conversation was going far afield I would return to the focus of the interview by returning to the questions in the schedule. In each interview, I attempted to employ Lofland’s guidance on interviewing as summarized in Fontana. “We agree with Lofland that regardless of the circumstances, researchers ought to (a) take notes regularly and promptly; (b) write everything down, no matter how unimportant it may seem at the time; (c) try to be as inconspicuous as possible in note taking; and (d) analyze their notes frequently” (2000, 656). At the conclusion of the interview, I reviewed the debriefing form with the respondent. I also used that time as an opportunity to answer any questions the respondent had about the research. Finally, as mentioned above, I would ask the respondent for names and contact information for other residents who may have been interested in participating in the research. 5.2.6 - Surveys Towards the end of the fieldwork, I converted the long-form interview into a survey. Surveys followed the same design and administration as interviews omitting most of the narrative questions and answers. I developed them on-site primarily to provide additional descriptor data and data regarding religious sites and performances in Ave Maria. The same consent form and debriefing form used in the interviews was used for the surveys. Many times those whom I asked for interviews did not want to spend thirty minutes but were willing to complete a survey. In addition, when no one would answer at a residence in a neighborhood I

66 was canvassing for interviews, I would leave a survey, with stamped and self-addressed envelopes, at the front doors. Several were completed and mailed back. Seventeen long-form interviews and seventeen surveys were selected for inclusion in my research. These informants represented approximately 18% of the occupied residences at the time of the fieldwork and 11% of the total residences in Ave Maria.

5.3 - Observations

I found it surprising that The Dictionary of Human Geography did not have an entry for ‘observation’ (Johnston et al. 2000). The social science research literature seems to assume that everyone has some notion of the term relative to the systematic watching and noting of an object or phenomenon. This notion is perhaps best summed up outside the academic literature on social science research in the Oxford English Dictionary. Their most relevant definition in this context is:

The action or an act of observing scientifically; esp. the careful watching and noting of an object or phenomenon in regard to its cause or effect, or of objects or phenomena in regard to their mutual relations (contrasted with experiment). Also: a measurement or other piece of information so obtained; an experimental result. (2011)

While there was no definition of ‘observation’ in The Dictionary of Human Geography, there was of ‘participant observation.’ This definition indicated that researchers live with a group for a year or more in an effort to understand things from the group’s perspective. Participant observers keep a field diary over the time. They are constantly challenged in the field to maintain enough distance between themselves and the group that they can remain objective. Both the practice and the results are challenged in contemporary geography for reasons of representation, particularly over issues of ethnographic authority and positionality (Jackson 2000). Observation seems to be the oldest of the geographic data collection techniques. However, it has only been carefully described/prescribed recently in geography. Those recent efforts to define observation as an academic technique in geography have largely followed the efforts in sociology and anthropology. Recently geographers have stepped beyond simply tailoring these theories to actually exploring their own. Kearns (2005) uses several categories to specify a type(s) of observation strategy. Her first category is that of “purpose” which she summarizes as “counting, complementing, and contextualizing”. The purpose of the observations made in Ave Maria is to complement other data collections on-site. She defines the purpose of complimentary observation saying: 67

The rationale here is to gather additional descriptive information before, during, or after other more structured form of data collection. The intent is to gain added value from time ‘in the field’ and to provide a descriptive complement to more controlled and formalized methods such as interviewing. (Kearns 2005, 193).

Kearns also develops a binary category of controlled:uncontrolled observations. Controlled observations follow an experimental approach carefully specifying what, how, and when to observe. Uncontrolled observations are not restricted to observing carefully specified phenomena. The work in Ave Maria clearly falls into the bin of uncontrolled observations. However, I find Werner and Schoepfle’s observational typology discussed in Angrosino and Mays de Perez (2000) more useful in this regard than Kearns. In the context of Angrosino and Mays de Perez’s typology, the study in Ave Maria is best identified as ‘focused observation.’

At that point, he or she moves into "focused observation," in which certain things, defined as irrelevant, can be ignored. Focused observation necessarily entails interviewing, because the insights gleaned from the experience of "natives" guide the ethnographer in his or her decisions about what is more or less important in that culture. Focused observations usually concentrate on well-defined types of group activity (e.g., religious rituals, classroom instruction, political elections). Finally, and most systematically, there is "selective observation," in which the ethnographer concentrates on the attributes of different types of activities. (2000, 677-678)

Finally, Kearns categorizes the level of observer participation using a spectrum developed by the sociologist R.L. Gold (1958). The spectrum ranges from the ‘complete observer’ (i.e. someone behind a one-way mirror; or, a physical geographer making field observations) to ‘complete participation’ (which Angrosino characterizes as a hair’s breadth from ‘going native’). The work in Ave Maria falls between the ‘observer-as-participant’ and the ‘participant-as-observer.’ In this range it is clear to both those observed and the researcher that the researcher is making field observations over a fairly narrow band of time. Typically informants interact with the researcher on more than one occasion and develop a level of familiarity that allows for natural interactions. The repeated exposure decreases the likelihood of mistakes made by too singular an observation at one extreme and ‘going native’ at the other extreme. 5.3.1 - Permissions for Making Observations In addition to the permissions I sought to conduct fieldwork in Ave Maria and at the university, I sought the permission of the head priest of the Oratory to conduct research in and

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about the church. He encouraged me to attend Mass and to make observations both then and at other times asking only that I not interrupt people engaging in spiritual practices. I also sought the permission of the owners of local restaurants to observe in and around their establishments. They were happy to have me do so. Some observations were made of events inside their establishments. Many observations were also made while sitting at tables outside their establishments while overlooking the town center. 5.3.2 - Preparations for Making Observations Prior to going into the field, my hair had been a pony tail that fell below my shoulder blades. Based upon my exploratory visit to Ave Maria, I decided to cut my hair short. I decided to do so to reduce the amount of attention I drew to myself while making observations and to improve my chances of getting interviews. It was a wise decision. During the first week of fieldwork I dressed business casual generally wearing semi-dress pants and shirts. I also carried a clipboard. Most of the men in town, other than priests, were wearing blue jeans and casual shirts and none were carrying clipboards. I sensed my manner of dress was marking me an ‘outsider.’ It became obvious to me that this was a problem when, on Saturday, I went to the Tropical Smoothie for breakfast dressed more casually and without the clipboard. One of the people working at the restaurant who had served me earlier in the week looked me over saying, “Wow, you don’t look like a tourist anymore.” I changed my manner of dress by adopting blue jeans and getting rid of the clipboard. While I didn’t want to be identified as an outsider I also did not want to appear to be trying to pass myself off as an insider. Ave Maria was a small community. Everyone knew everyone else who lived there. So there was no chance that in three weeks I would be mistaken as an insider by anyone who lived there. Further, it was not my intention to conduct covert research. That is why I adopted the position of ‘professional stranger.’ During my stay, I tried to avoid blending in completely. I made a point to wear an FSU ball cap most of the time. When I was making general observations, for example while eating lunch, I would also display a sign inviting people to “Tell me about Ave Maria”. I made it clear to anyone interested that I was a Ph.D. Candidate from Florida State University conducting dissertation research and openly discussed the broad parameters of that research. However, after the first week those who were curious seemed to be satisfied as I had very few questions about myself or my work after that time.

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5.3.3 - Observation Procedures While conducting fieldwork in Ave Maria I observed both from the position of a participant in certain activities and simply as an observer. One of the first things I noticed was that I was also constantly being observed. For that reason, I adopted the practice of making short notes in the field and then completing the notes of what I observed in the evenings. This avoided drawing as much attention to myself through the day. When I made formal observations I found a comfortable place, sat back quietly, and observed, occasionally making notes of what I was observing. During those times I initiated conversations only to arrange an interview, to clarify what was happening, or to explain who I was and what I was doing. I was also a participant observer in a number of events. I participated, for example, in daily Mass. In each of these participatory events, whenever it was appropriate, I would talk with other participants to develop a better understanding of the importance of the event to them. As with formal observations, I made brief notes during the events I participated in and then expand on them in the evenings. While at these events I adopted Tedlock’s position of ‘professional stranger.’ According to Tedlock:

In these roles ethnographers are expected to maintain a polite distance from those studied and to cultivate rapport, not friendship; compassion, not sympathy; respect, not belief; understanding, not identification; admiration, not love. If the researcher were to cultivate friendship, sympathy, belief, identification, and love, then, so we are told, he or she would run the risk of taking up ‘complete membership’. (2000, 457)

In this capacity, I followed Cassell’s suggestion and tried to be “an intelligent, sympathetic, and non-judgmental listener” (1988, 95, Cook 2005, 179). Table 5-1 identifies some of the events where I made participant observations. In addition to these events, I made systematic observations about building use in the town center and unstructured observations around town.

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Table 5-1 Events where participant observations were conducted

Event Description

Christmas Carol A play presented by the Ave Maria Young Actors in the AMU Ballroom

The Annunciation Installation of the first panel of the sculpture

Festival of Lights A celebration of Christmas held in the Town Center

Festival of Lessons, Carols for A Christmas Cantata held in the Oratory Advent

One by One Meeting A social outreach ministry in which several residents from Ave Maria participate in Immokalee, Florida

Trolley Tour of Ave Maria A promotional tour of Ave Maria

Community Meeting An open discussion of issues relevant to the community at The Bean of Ave Maria (the local coffee shop).

Rosary Walk A devotional walk at AMU

Christmas Mass A worship service celebrating Christmas held in the Oratory

Daily Mass Daily worship service (several times in Latin)

In addition to these events, I made systematic observations about building facades, configurations, and uses in the town center. In the past, I have used, quite successfully, a GPS to identify the locations from which I took inspection photographs and made exterior inspection observations. However, in Ave Maria, a combination of the heights of the buildings (which prevented line-of-sight to many of the navigational satellites) and selective availability (government-based intentional GPS error) made the use of the GPS highly inaccurate in the town center. To adjust, I took up a position on the curb opposite the front of each business and made my observations from that location.

5.4 - Discourse analysis

While conducting fieldwork I collected representational objects (i.e. advertising flyers, anti-abortion leaflets, etc.) suitable for later discourse analysis. These materials were openly displayed and offered for free to the visiting public. I also photographed and inspected a number of material cultural traces in Ave Maria. Since concluding the fieldwork, I have collected videos, newspaper and magazine items, blog comments, online promotions, etc. by Internet searches. 71

I have broken these material cultural traces into three broad groups based on their representational technology. Texts included print media such as newspapers and magazines, planning and regulatory documents, internal documents, blogs and similar text heavy electronic content, and promotional or self-interpretative documents. Visual materials included maps, photos, sketches, drawings, statuary, non-text heavy web sites, and building facades. Videos included material that contained both visual and audio content and generally adopted the positionality of news or documentary pieces. Appendix B contains lists of representative samples of material from each category.

5.5 - Data Analysis

The data generated for Objective 1 was analyzed in Dedoose (Weisner and Lieber 2010), a proprietary Internet based mixed-methods software package. This software offered the capacity to integrate a number of quantitative measurements with a typical range of qualitative measurements. Interview, survey, and observation data was entered as it was collected in a Microsoft Access database and then uploaded to Dedoose. Many of the materials for discourse analysis were reviewed in the field. They were scanned, converted to texts, and uploaded after the completion of fieldwork. I began coding the interview and observation data while I was in the field. This process has continued in iterative cycles over most of the past year. Codes have been emergent, developing largely from the analysis of the data. Fifty-nine resources generated 574 excerpts that were initially tagged with 127 codes. A few codes emerged as particularly important including, for example, Catholic Identity, Ave Maria University, and Conservative Catholicism. I used various reporting and visualization techniques in the program to analyze the data. I decided to use Dedoose primarily for financial reasons. Having used it, I am not sure I would do so again. Several reports, such as Code Co-Occurrence , Code Application, and Descriptor Ratios were very useful. However, I was unsatisfied with its visualizations.

5.6 - Conclusion

Chapter 5 identifies the qualitative methods I employ in my research. It identifies the data necessary for the analysis and indicates how that data was collected. My study benefitted from methods associated with grounded theory. Through interviews, surveys, observations, and inspections in-situ data was collected for analysis. This was supplemented by material used to permit the development, on-line promotions of the development, and media representations of 72 the development that were found primarily through Internet searches. The materials were coded and analyzed in iterative cycles, permitting the identification of the meaning and meaningfulness of domain related cultural traces to members of the Ave Maria community.

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CHAPTER SIX

METHODS – OBJECTIVE 2

In this chapter, I explore the methods used to research my second objective. This objective is to analyze the significance of the spatial configuration of the material cultural traces and performances identified in Objective 1 to determine whether spatial configuration enhances or detracts from the community’s domain focus embodied in its material cultural traces and performances, and if so, how. Chapter 6 identifies the methods I use in the spatial analysis of data; the data necessary for these analyses; and how the data is actually collected for analysis. My data is primarily qualitative data, developed under the first objective, and quantitative data from the Collier County Property Appraiser’s Office. I construct and use an ontology to guide the formalization of data collected and analyzed qualitatively in the first objective in this objective. My study benefits from GISc/GIS as well as two methods associated with urban morphology; morphogenetics and space syntax. GISc ontology provides the method for formalizing natural language data, developed in the first objective, for GIS analysis in the second objective. GIS provides methods for Nearest Neighbor, Moran’s Index, and Natural Neighbor analysis to identify spatial patterns of clustering of 1) reifications (defined in Section 3.2) and 2) respondents’ ‘important places’ (defined in Section 5.2.1). It is also used to explore the spatial correlation of reifications and ‘important places’ and for interpolation of features with varying densities of a particular attribute to produce a surface reflective or the areal extents of those densities. Morphogenetics provides the methods to regionalize the development based on land use, ownership, barriers to contiguous development, economics and culture resulting in the specific spatial configurations into character areas. Space syntax provides the methods for segment line analysis and intervisibility analysis I use to identify spatially configured cores of natural movement.

6.1 - GISc/GIS Methods and Data

6.1.1 - Ontology and Knowledge Base

An ontology provides the bridge between the data identified and analyzed qualitatively using natural language and the formalization of that data for its analysis and representation in computer systems. Using the ontology, a number of instances identified qualitatively were

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assembled into a knowledge base. These allowed for additional refinements to the ontology and set up an iterative cycle between it, the knowledge base, and the data. Once the data was formalized in the knowledge base it was represented in the GIS. Several key themes emerged from background research for my study of Ave Maria that shape the ontology. One of these is the dual concepts of traces and performances. Traces are complex sets of marks, residues, and remnants of cultural life that tie the meaning of places to the cultural groups that make them. Performances are activities that do the same. In my study, the meanings and values of these traces and performances are determined qualitatively in the first objective. The establishment of both the meaning and value of the traces and performances occurs in the matrix of natural language and did not suggest an obvious means for organizing the knowledge geographically into categories suitable for computer analysis and representation. A second key theme is the theoretical construction of ‘communities of practice.’ Communities of practice theory holds that a community of practice has an interpretive tradition of established meanings called its ‘repertoire.’ It also actively negotiates meanings through the course of day-to-day life through its ‘practice.’ Practice is the application and adaptation of the interpretive tradition to the novel circumstances of the moment and the extension of the tradition through research. These broad definitions provide the categories necessary for organizing the knowledge base for computer analysis and representation. The purpose of the ontology and the knowledge base is to facilitate the formalization of areas of the development that are significant to the community’s domain interest, identified by natural language in Objective 1, so they can be spatially analyzed in Objective 2. In Objective 2 they will be correlated with locations identified as ‘important places’ by interview respondents. Quantitative GIS tools are used to study the spatial configuration of the location of reifications in the community’s repertoire and the correlation of their locations with places identified by interview respondents as ‘important places’ in the community. Since these tools use point data, reifications are represented as point data. Sites that are the spaces for community performances are also included in the knowledge base. The correlation of activities that compose the participatory component of the repertoire are made visually. Therefore the knowledge base of participatory activities includes both non- mobile activities such as meetings represented by polygons that indicate the extent of the area involved in the meetings and mobile activities such as walking meditations represented by lines indicating the path of the activity.

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Using the open source software Protégé, thirty-two individual instances (material cultural traces and performances) relevant to the domain interests of the community are organized into a knowledge base using a naïve ontology. The ontology draws on the broad ontological categories developed in communities of practice theory to structure the data. The reification data is represented as points and the participatory data is represented as lines and polygons.

6.1.2 - GIS Quantitative Analysis

My GIS based quantitative analysis used data that represented cultural traces that were first classified by the ontology as reifications. It also used places identified during interviews as ‘important places’ by respondents. Both of these sets of data were represented as points on separate GIS layers. Points were used to represent these data because potential patterns of spatial proximity of the features, not their spatial dimension, were the characteristic of interest in this analysis. The tools selected to conduct the analysis utilized this point data to analyze spatial patterns. A shortcoming of my study is the number of data points I have for statistical analysis. Preliminary study of the development suggested that there would be far more potential respondents. However, the impact of the implosion of the housing bubble (discussed at length in Sections 8.3.2 and 10.2) severely dampened demand for housing in the community. In addition, I did not study cultural traces that did not seem specifically related to the community’s repertoire. For example, there were a number of memorial pavers surrounding the Oratory. I did not use them because none of my respondents indicated that they were important. This decision excluded a lot of potential data points. However I believe the inclusion of them would have been misleading both in terms of the nature of embodied cultural identity and in the reliability of the data’s statistical analysis. The visual analysis of much of this data indicated apparent patterns of clustering. I considered forgoing the statistical analysis because the patterns were obvious. I finally decided to proceed with them for two reasons. First, part of my effort in this research is to convey the steps in an analytical algorithm to identify patterns in the locations of cultural traces. Such patterns provide potential clues to underlying causes for their spatial associations and impact of their spatial configuration. In situations where the data was not so visually apparent, its spatial statistical analysis would reveal more nuanced patterns. Second, I have not relied solely on this data for my conclusions. I triangulate between quantitative and qualitative data to my conclusions. In this particular study, I put very little weight on the results of the statistical 76

analysis of data. I anticipate other studies where the analysis of this data will be more heavily weighted. As mentioned before, my study did not employ random sampling to select respondents to interview. The following spatial statistics are, therefore, not based on random sampling. While the statistics are believed to be indicative of the population in general they can only be said to reliably indicate the subpopulation of those who were actually interviewed. In the case of the reifications, the points representing buildings are located at the building’s main entrance. The outdoor sculpture site for The Annunciation is identified at the main construction platform. Points for the remaining sites are located using GPS and by comparison to overlays of aerial photographs taken in 2010 (USDA-FSA Aerial Photography Field Office 2010). In the case of ‘important places’ identified by respondents as part of the mapping component of the interview, locations are identified by combining their mapping data with aerials overlays. A number of respondents identified the same feature and in these cases the feature is identified with same location. This allows for the aggregation of the data. All of the GIS data is re-projected into the 1983 North American Datum for control of coordinate points. The Florida State Plane East projection was used as the coordinate system because of its high accuracy and low distortion within the bounds of the projection and because all of the Ave Maria development was within the boundaries of the projection. 6.1.2.1 - Average Nearest Neighbor Analysis An Average Nearest Neighbor analysis determines the randomness of the location of the features (Diggle 1981, Mitchell 2005). The null hypothesis is that the features’ locations are randomly distributed. The technique analyzes the distance between the location of each feature and its closest neighbor, based on Euclidian distance, and calculates the average of those distances. The index compares the expected average distance of a similar number of features randomly spread over an equally sized area of analysis to the actual average calculated from the observed features. A p-value indicates the significance in difference between the actual and expected scores. A positive Z-score indicates dispersal. A negative Z-score indicates clustering. Proximity to 0 indicates the magnitude of the Z-score and a value of 0 indicates randomness. The Average Nearest Neighbor ratio is given (Mitchell 2005, 88-96) as:

= (1) ��� where ��� is the �observed�� mean distance between each feature and their nearest neighbor:

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= (2) � ∑�=1 �� and � �is� the expected� mean distance for the features given a random pattern: . ��� = (3) 0 5 � �� � where equals� �the� distance between feature i and its nearest neighboring feature, n corresponds

� A to the total� number of features, and is the total study area. A potential problem with my analysis has to do with co-located features, or nearly co- located, features. In the respondents’ ‘important places’ many places are named multiple times and a few are named by almost every respondent. This results in the co-location of these responses. Co-location can skew the mean distance of the features to the low side indicating clustering where there may not be any. To account for co-location in respondents’ ‘important places’ data, the analysis is run on both the whole data set and on a data set that aggregated co- located features into single features. There are ninety-six features in the disaggregated set and twenty-nine in the aggregated set. No effort is made to correct for this problem in the data set of reifications because the total number of features in the disaggregated set was already small (sixteen) and aggregating would have aggravated the problems with such a small data set. 6.1.2.2 - Moran’s Index A Moran’s Index uses “the magnitude of feature values to identify and measure the strength of spatial patterns” (Mitchell 2005, 118). I use it to test whether the location of important places is correlated to the number of reifications within walking distance of the important place. The Moran’s Index indicates clustered values by a positive Z-score, dispersed values by a negative Z-score, and randomness by proximity to 0. Clustered means features with similar magnitudes of values are found in closer proximity to one another than one would expect by pure random distributions. Dispersed means that features with similar magnitudes of values are found at a greater distance from one another than one would expect by pure random distributions. The null hypothesis is that the features are randomly distributed. In other words, there is no spatial autocorrelation between the magnitudes of the attribute and the location of the features. A p-value indicates the significance of any variance between actual values and the values expected based on random distributions of the features. The Moran’s I statistic for spatial autocorrelation is given (Mitchell 2005, 121, Anselin 1995, 99) as:

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, = � � (4) � � ∑�=1 ∑�=1 �� ����� � 2 �� ∑�=1 �� where� is the deviation of an attribute for feature i from its mean ( ), , is the spatial weight �between� feature i and j, n is equal to the total number of features,�� − and�� �� �is the aggregate of all the spatial weights: � � = , (5) � � I� �used ∑inverse�=1 ∑�=1 distance�� � to spatially weight the statistic. Inverse distance weighting has the effect of giving more influence to features that are close than to more distant points. Raising the distance to a power exaggerates the influence of closer points. Since the distance under analysis was relatively small I did not feel it necessary to raise the distance to a power in this analysis. The sites on the ‘important places’ layer are aggregated so that each point will only be measured once even if it had been selected multiple times. Next the number of reifications within a quarter-mile of each of the aggregated points is counted. A quarter-mile is selected as the collection zone because, while it is debated, a quarter-mile is often considered the distance a person will walk before seeking alternative means of transportation. This ‘walking distance’ seems a reasonable standard for this analysis. A Moran’s Index analysis is conducted to assess the likelihood of a correlation between the location of ‘important places’ and the number of reifications to which they are proximate. 6.1.2.3 - Natural Neighbor Analysis Interpolation is the estimation of the value of non-given points based on the value of given points. In spatial analysis it is generally used to create a continuous surface by using a raster grid to estimate unknown values between the known values of spatial points. In this process, unknown values are assigned a weighted value from each known neighbor weighted in some manner to account for the distance between the points. Through the addition of boundaries continuous surfaces, which include interpolated surfaces, can be used to show areas of more similar values. An elevation model is a great example in which elevation values are sampled, the values of unmeasured points between sampled points are estimated, and contour lines are constructed to show areas of similar elevations. I selected natural neighbor analysis (Sibson 1981, Watson 1999) for my study primarily because of the way it weights the values of estimated points. It is local in that it uses a subset of sample points around the unmeasured point that is determined by Voronoi tessellations. In doing so, it assures a smooth surface whose values are within the range of the samples used. Voronoi tessellations are based on Thiessen polygons. The surface is divided into an irregular set of 79

polygons based on each unmeasured point’s proximity to measured points. Each polygon contained all of the unmeasured points closest to the sample point inside the polygon. Within each polygon every point would have the same value as the measured sample point. The polygons would collectively create a continuous plane over the area of interest with no overlaps or gaps (a tessellation). In natural neighbor analysis, a Voronoi tessellation (Figure 6-1) is constructed using the known points in the surface. A blanket of evenly spaced cells that looks like a fishnet is laid over the original tessellation. The center of each cell in the fishnet becomes an unmeasured point where a value is estimated. A new tessellation is created for each estimated point that includes all of the original points plus the new estimation point. The area of the tessellations in the original diagram is compared to the new tessellation. The areas of some of the polygons of the second tessellation, the one created by the insertion of the estimation point, are different from those of the first. The polygons that change with the insertion of the new point become the new point’s neighbors.

Figure 6-1 Natural neighbors coefficients example (Markluffel 2010). This illustration is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

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The value each original neighbor contributes to the inserted point is the original neighbor’s value weighted by the prorate share of the new polygon that falls in the original neighbor’s polygon. For example, if the value of the original polygon was 20, and 10% of the area of the new polygon is in common with the original polygon, then the original polygon would add 20 x 10%, or 2, to the estimated value of the inserted point. The contributory value of the neighbor polygons is summed producing a weighted estimate of the value of the insertion point. The values of the cells estimated by this method form relatively smooth surfaces that are summarized by their similarity of value and that are represented with boundaries.

6.1.3 - GIS Qualitative Analysis

Participation is a social activity that tends to form a functional region with a diminishing gradient extending outward from a center of activity. Participatory activities run a gauntlet of associations from particular places to regions of Ave Maria to the entire development and beyond. Hence representing and analyzing participatory activities is often a less exact task than reifications and can benefit from a different methodological approach. For example, stories about Tom Monaghan are retold throughout the development. Most of my respondents describe aspects of his life at some point during the interview. Knowing some version of Monaghan’s life story is part of the basic knowledge that full members of the community have and use. They actively retell stories about his life to emphasize important aspects of the community’s identity. I mention this to illustrate the more complex nature of representing many participatory aspects of Ave Maria’s repertoire. I find the use of lines and polygons, rather than points, a more desirable representation of participation. The use of GIS makes the representations far more accurate than I can produce using other technologies and permits me to make exploratory visual analysis of the results. Participatory activities are divided into two categories, mobile and non-mobile. Three mobile activities are included for analysis. These are activities whose focus is more on movement along a route than upon co-presence in a place. These include the ‘Rosary Walk’, a group of children from the local private school who caroled though town, and the route that processionals follow at the Oratory. Lines are used to represent these participations because they suggest movement along particular routes. The ‘Rosary Walk’ was recorded by GPS when I participated in the event. A respondent I was interviewing at the time the carolers came through the coffee house reported the route the 81

children had followed from the private school through town and back to the school. I reconstructed the route from that report. The processional route was a best estimate from the descriptions provided by several respondents during interviews. Non-mobile activities are meetings that emphasize co-presence through assemblage in an area for a performance. For example, Theology on Tap at Queen Mary’s Pub involves a professor from the university lecturing on a topic of interest to the community followed by a question and answer session. Polygons suggest co-presence so they are used to indicate non- mobile performances. The final representations enable me to visually inspect the data identified by the ontology as participatory. Its overlay on the representations of the reification data, developed quantitatively above, enables the visual correlation of participatory and reifications data.

6.2 - Morphogenetic methods and data

Usually morphogenetics is employed to study older settlements that have an emergent organization. The analysis of periods and types of building construction, land uses, and transportation networks leads to a complex understanding of regions as they developed and changed in response both to path dependencies and to novelties. One could reasonably argue that it makes little sense to study the regionalization of a new planned community like Ave Maria. Planning documents for planned communities provide a comprehensive assessment of the interrelationships between urban forms and functions of the development. Further, most of the initial construction occurs at essentially the same time and within the same morphological period. However, preliminary research in Ave Maria revealed that novel events—changes in the housing market and debates concerning the intersection of commerce and religion in Ave Maria —play an important role in the development’s evolution. The impact of these events is usefully represented through regionalization of Ave Maria into character areas. I regionalize Ave Maria into character areas by examining the type of property ownership, existing land uses, barriers to contiguous development, the building fabric, and cultural and economic influences. I identify property ownership types by examining the reported ownership of properties. In most cases this is a fairly straightforward process of examining the cadaster layer’s owner address fields. In a few cases, such as condominium ownerships, I have to examine records on the Property Appraiser’s website. The cadastral data is contained in a GIS formatted cadastral map provided by the Collier County Property Appraiser’s Office (Collier County Property Appraiser's Office 2010a) to the Florida Department of Revenue. 82

Typically, I determine land and building use by reviewing zoning maps from regional regulators, such as the county planning office, that identify regions of various actual and approved land uses. However Ave Maria is permitted as a Development of Regional Impact (DRI). DRI permitting generally allows flexibility in the actual land uses developed within the DRI boundaries. This flexibility is regulated by the permitting that establishes the DRI. Generally this permitting regulates such matters as how much permeable surface may be covered, how high structures can be built, and total square footages of building footprint or floor area coverage that will be allowed in the development. The developer uses these as guides in designing and constructing the communities within the boundaries of the DRI. In the case of Ave Maria, most of the developable area is simply identified on zoning maps as ‘mixed-use.’ Therefore, instead of examining zoning and land use maps, I examine planning documents submitted by the developer for the initial DRI approval. The property appraiser represents building and land use data as a field in the building layer of the planimetrics map and as a land use field in the cadastral layer. The building types distinguish in the planimetrics map between “commercial,” “residential,” and auxiliary uses. This is a problem in that building types are typically far more complex. In Ave Maria, for example, there are a significant number of institutional, office, utility, and public uses. The second problem with sole reliance on the property appraiser’s data is that land used for dual purposes is not represented as such. For example, the ground floors of a number of the buildings in the town center are used for commercial purposes and the upper floors for residential purposes. These buildings are shown simply as commercial uses. Land use data in the cadastral layer makes an effort to distinguish among various types of residential uses however it does little to improve distinctions in non-residential uses. Visual inspection usefully augmented this building and land use data providing for more clearly defined land and building uses. On-site inspection and aerial photography were the primary methods I used to augment the property appraiser’s building and land use data. I made visual inspections during December of 2010. I used a combination of cadastral data, transportation data, and land use data to identify barriers to uninterrupted homogenous development. The developer designed many of the barriers. For example, retention ponds, major roads, and the location of utility plants all served as development barriers. The cadastral data was contained in a GIS formatted cadastral map provided by the Collier County Property Appraiser’s Office (Collier County Property Appraiser's Office 2010a)

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at the Florida Department of Revenue. There was no useful metadata associated with the cadaster however analysis of the table data indicated that it contained the 2009 assessment year data (based upon 2008 ownership data) and included real estate sales as late as the third quarter of 2009. Therefore I have concluded that this layer represents cadastral data for Collier County in the latter half of 2009. Transportation and building use data was drawn from the 2010 Planimetrics Geodatabase provided by the Collier County Property Appraiser’s Office (Collier County Property Appraiser's Office 2010b) based on data collected in December of 2009 and January of 2010. The transportation and cadastral data was supplemented by plat sheets variously registered with Collier County throughout 2006 and 2007 provided to me by the developer Barron Collier Companies. To develop a building fabric required an on-site inspection. This inspection included identification of the buildings’ functions and land uses. The buildings in the town center are predominantly mixed-use, displaying a vertical geography with consumer services located on the ground floor and residential uses or destination bound professional uses on upper floors. One set of owners owns all of the ground floor area in the Town Centre and leases the space primarily to retail and commercial occupants. The upper floors have a number of residential owners. I estimated the heights of buildings at the time of the exterior ground level inspections and used LiDAR data to augment those estimates. LiDAR is an optical remote sensing technology that measures distance using pulses of laser light. Buildings were typically three stories high in the Town Centre. I estimated floor area by multiplying the area of the building footprint (estimated from the property appraiser’s building footprint layer) by three. Interior inspections were limited to walk-throughs of a number of the ground floor units in the course of participatory interactions and only included those areas readily apparent to the general public. These were useful for verifying uses, identifying general spatial configurations, and observing the display of distinctive art and ceremonial items. As will be covered in the discussion of grounded theory, the art and ceremonial items tied the immediate use of the unit to the ideological text of the larger town. Fieldwork in Ave Maria during December of 2010 provided the basic description of the building fabric. This description was supplemented by LiDAR images of Ave Maria generated by the Florida Department of Emergency Management (2010) as part of their disaster preparedness response and recovery preparation. This data was dated 2008 and had an estimated vertical accuracy of 0.6 feet. Building footprint data was estimated from the 2010 Planimetrics

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Geodatabase provided by the Collier County Property Appraiser’s Office(Collier County Property Appraiser's Office 2010b) based on data collected in December of 2009 and January of 2010. Qualitative data developed in the first objective of my study served as the cultural and economic data used to regionalize the development. The methods of its collection were discussed in Chapter 3 and the results are discussed in Chapter 7.

6.3 - Space syntax data and methods

In my study I am interested in determining whether the community concentrates its repertoire and practice, and hence the traces of its cultural identity, in areas that, as a consequence of spatial configuration, are natural movement destinations. Are natural movement destinations the locations of higher densities of cultural traces?

6.3.1 - Segment Line Analysis

Line analysis requires a map of linear open space data. I examined several transportation GIS layers to find a suitable map. The road layer from Collier County (Collier County Property Appraiser's Office 2010b) is the most useful. I constructed an axial map from the road layer map. I used ESRI’s ArcMap (Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) 2010) for the construction. To construct the map I created an empty line layer which I laid over the road layer. Then I constructed a series of lines that overlapped at their extreme ends that link all of the paved roads in the development thereby constructing the axial line map. Once this was complete, I compared the constructed map to the aerial layers of the development to assure completeness and accuracy. I subsequently moved the axial line map constructed in ArcMap into Depthmap, a custom space syntax program developed by Alasdair Turner at the Bartlett School of Graduate Studies of University College London (Turner 2010). I used this program to segment the axial lines and then generate the integration metrics. In examining the preliminary results, I identified and corrected lines I improperly joined in ArcMap and ran the integration analysis again. When I was satisfied this produced a reliable analysis I transferred the results back into ArcMap. The purpose for using the integration metric in my study is to explore how the linear open public spaces, in this case the road network, function as an interface between those who dwell in the development. Does the network of roads focus the community’s life in particular

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geographical areas of the community? If so, does that focus influence the cultural identity and practice of the community? To address these questions, I analyzed the segment line map in ArcMap after importing the results of the space syntax analysis. This allowed me to visually correlate the results of the segment line analysis with the spatial configuration of the community’s cultural traces.

6.3.2 - Visibility Graph Analysis

Visibility graph analysis required a map of convex open space data. In particular, I wanted a layer that would show the relationship between building footprints and open space. The generally level plane of the ground did not make changes of elevation a relevant consideration for this analysis. By assuming a six-foot tall viewer, I eliminated consideration of low-lying objects such as benches and bicycle racks. And the short history of the development resulted in the planted trees (the only trees in the area of the development I was analyzing) being inconsequential to the analysis. I found the most suitable building footprint layer to be the one provided by the Collier County Property Appraiser’s Office in the Planimetrics Geodatabase (Ibid.). This form of analysis is very resource intensive and the software (Depthmap) has hard limits on the total number of origin points that could be included in the analysis. I was forced to balance the density of origin points used to conduct the analysis (the resolution of the analysis) against the geographic extent of the area to be analyzed. I explored a number of combinations of origin densities and analytical areas .A very course grained analysis failed to capture the visual linkages between and around buildings. Details across open spaces were very course making a subsequent visual analysis of a correlation between visual integration and the location of cultural traces less meaningful. A finer grained analysis captured the visual interaction, between buildings and across expanses, in what subjectively seemed a valid representation and that offered a level of detail that I was subjectively comfortable relying on. However a fine grained analysis had to be restricted to a much smaller geographic area due to restrictions both on the software and hardware I was using. My final decision was based in part on research using other methods that indicated a smaller geographic area would be acceptable and partially on the improved detail captured by a finer grain of analysis. Once a useful geographic location and extent were determined, I constructed a layer in ArcMap that identified each. Figure 6-2 shows how the analysis was eventually restricted to the center of town. The visibility graph target area was confined to the area inside the red box in the 86 left exhibit. It only covered the open public space in that area. The exhibit on the right portrays the open public area and the buildings that influenced visibility in the target area. The open space in the target area was covered with a grid of origin points at a 10-foot-by-10-foot density. The visibility analysis was conducted on these points. Each point in this area served once as an origin and repeatedly as a destination to calculate the visibility integration metric. The purpose of using this is to address whether visual accessibility influences the community’s placement of traces. In other words, does the community tend to place cultural traces in locations that, due to the visual construction of the area, people tend to travel-to, to destinations? As with the segment line analysis made in Depthmap, the completed analysis of visual integration was transferred to ArcMap for visual correlation of areas of high integration, destinations, with the locations of cultural traces.

Figure 6-2 Visibility graph geographic extent (left exhibit boxed in red) and the actual area of analysis of open public areas (right exhibit in beige) showing the location of buildings that influence visibility in the area of analysis (right exhibit, buildings in blue).

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6.4 - Conclusion

Chapter 6 identifies the methods employed to study the spatial configuration of data. It identifies the data necessary for the analysis and indicates how that data was collected. My study benefits from methods associated with GIS, morphogenetics, and space syntax. Data sources include qualitative data collected in Objective 1, existing cadastral and planimetrics data, and LiDAR data.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

RESULTS – OBJECTIVE 1

My first objective is to document and describe the religious beliefs that form the domain of the community and the cultural traces that embody that domain. Seventeen interviews and seventeen surveys, twenty-four days of participant observations made while staying on-site, and more than 100 text and media sources (of which 25 were selected for close analysis) form the core of the data for this objective. In summary I find that communities of practice have a common enterprise, or domain, about which they organize their collective efforts. That domain in Ave Maria is nurturing a day-to-day conservative Catholic “way of life”. That domain is so central to the collective identity of the community and the individual identities of the members that Ave Maria displays a high degree of cultural homogeneity organized around it. The cultural traces in Ave Maria embody the community’s domain and reflect that homogeneity. Although the common domain or enterprise is the Catholic way of life, that does not mean that the members agree about every aspect of life in the development. For example, several respondents aligned themselves to the social right of most Catholics in the community. They felt the community, and particularly the university, should be more stringent in its opposition to certain moral practices, particularly birth control and abortion. The proposed location of the campus of a genetics lab inside the boundaries of the development led to the airing of these differences of views within the community. Several blogs and articles in conservative publications are particularly strong advocates of a more staunchly conservative position. A domain in the parlance of communities of practice theory occurs at the day-to-day scale of the enterprise. While the enterprise may involve or have repercussions for scales beyond the day-to-day involvement of members, it is at the scale of the day-to-day that the domain of the community is established.

7.1 - Demographic Profile of Ave Maria

Ave Maria was opened to residential occupation in September 2007. Prior to then there was no noteworthy permanent occupation of the area as the area was primarily tomato fields. Census data collected for the 2010 Census (U. S. Bureau of the Census 2011a, U. S. Bureau of the Census 2011b) and reported in the block level redistricting data set indicates that there is a total population of 1,279 persons in Ave Maria of which 554 (43%) live in group quarters

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(dormitories) indicating a permanent residential population of 725. Of the 1,279 total residents 994 (78%) are identified as adults and 1167 (91%) as white. 221 houses are reported as occupied in the area and, based on the reported percentages of occupation, indicates a total 366 housing units. There is an average of 3.28 permanent residents per occupied household. While I was conducting fieldwork I was unable to find a source that would state definitively the number of homes constructed and sold or provide data on the timing of sales. Therefore, I drove each neighborhood, with the exception of the condominiums in La Piazza, and counted the houses constructed and the ones that appeared occupied. After returning from the field, I reviewed the Collier County Property Appraiser’s records for further validation of my field estimates of home constructions and occupations. I did not record race or ethnicity data while in the field. My estimates, detailed further in Table 8-3 and Chapter 11, are approximately 387 residences constructed, 328 sold, 303 sold to private residences (the remainder sold to the University for use primarily as graduate student housing), with approximately 175 occupied at the time fieldwork was conducted. The nearest settlement is Immokalee which the Census Bureau identified as a Census Designated Place presumably because Immokalee is unincorporated. Immokalee reported a total population of 24,154 of which 66% were identified as adults and 44% as white. The estimated person per household was 4.51. Ave Maria is located in Collier County. During this same period, Collier County reported a total population of 321,520 of which 80% were identified as adults and 84% as white. The estimated persons per household was 2.63.

7.2 - Religious Profile of Ave Maria

A substantial portion of my time in Ave Maria was spent locating and interviewing respondents. This was essential because the Census Bureau no longer collects data on religious affiliations and it was my assumption going into the study that Ave Maria did not show a typical distribution of faiths in its population. I did not find any independent sources of data to confirm or deny this assumption nor to detail the particular qualities of faiths in Ave Maria. Throughout the study interviewing has been the primarily source of data to address these questions. As mentioned in Chapter 3 (Methods – Objective 1) above, 17 long-form interviews and 17 surveys were conducted representing approximately 18% of the households and 11% of the residents in Ave Maria at the time the fieldwork was conducted.

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Figure 7-1 Total respondents from each residential character area

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7.2.1 - Religious Affiliation

Eighteen of thirty-four respondents (53%) reported living in Ave Maria for three years or longer. This suggests they moved to the development within the first four months it was opened. Thirteen (38%) lived there for one to three years and the remaining three (9%) had lived in Ave Maria less than a year. Eighteen (53%) respondents were male and sixteen (47%) were female. Eleven (33%) were sixty-five years old or older, nine (26%) were forty-six to sixty-five, and fourteen (41%) were eighteen to forty-five. Thirty-one of thirty-four respondents (91%) interviewed in Ave Maria indicated they were Catholic. Twenty-nine (85% of total respondents and 94% of Catholic respondents) have been Catholic their entire lives. The single most frequently mentioned reason for moving to Ave Maria was personal faith (71% of total respondents and 77% of Catholic respondents). Based on the most recent religious adherence survey conducted by Glenmary Research Center in 2000 (Jones et al. 2002), 19% of Collier County’s population was Catholic. The center reported a nationwide total population of 62,035,042 Catholic adherents in 2000 and the Census Bureau reported a total population for the nation of 308,745,538 persons indicating 20% of the nation’s total population was Catholic. Twenty-two respondents spoke to their views about Ave Maria being a Catholic place. One respondent seemed to speak for many when he said, "It is a Catholic town built around a Catholic university. The entire community becomes infused by Catholicism. It is not just a lot of Catholics living in the same place. It is a place of faith." Another ask, “Why would anyone move here if they were not Catholic?" In fact, three of thirty-four respondents indicated they were not Catholic. While there was a high degree of homogeneity around the orientation to a Catholic faith, those who identified themselves as not being Catholic were quick to emphasize that they did not feel there was intolerance for their views. One respondent reported having a discussion with Tom Monaghan while thinking about moving to Ave Maria and discussing the topic of faith. He reported Monaghan response saying, "He said his focus was on family and on values. He was fine with my religious views." Another respondent who was not Catholic said, “I advise anyone to come [to Ave Maria] Catholic or not. Here you don't have to look over your shoulder.” Respondents indicated that the following reasons were the most influential in their decision to move to Ave Maria: twenty-four of thirty-four (71%) indicated their personal faith; 92

ten (29%) indicated the presence of the university; seven (21%) that a job was influential including four (12%) that a job with the university was; and three (9%) that the community’s amenities were influential. A surprising number also mentioned in their narrative responses that the welfare of their children and the town’s family values reputation played important roles in their decision. As one respondent described it, “This place is the Catholic Mayberry4 ”. At least one reason for this highly homogenous population was the means by which many members learned of the development. Many of them reported hearing about the development through Catholic friends and family, others while searching for Catholic schools, and other while attending Catholic events. For example, one member reported hearing about it at a conference. Another heard about it at a Knights of Columbus meeting. Several heard about it through earlier contacts with Ave Maria College. Several learned of the development while searching for a Catholic university or a private school for their children. An article in the alternative weekly newspaper Boston Phoenix reported about a presentation of the community made by Tom Monaghan at a Catholic men’s association meeting in Boston (Reilly 2005).

7.2.2 - Evidence of the Centrality of Conservative Catholicism

Many identified themselves as conservative Catholics. Based upon the review of two extensive studies of rightwing Catholicism outlined in Chapters 1 and upon my field research, I have identified a collection of characteristics commonly attached with conservative Catholicism and found in Ave Maria. A list of these characteristics is found in Section 4 of Chapter 1. These characteristics were frequently reflected in statements made by respondents. I have selected and summarized several representative interviews that speak to these themes. YHN is a middle-age female who moved to Ave Maria with her husband and children three years ago. She mentioned several times that she is grateful that she does not have to comprehend the complexities of faith. The ecclesiastical church has done that for her. She is content to live by the laws and rules of the church because in doing so she receives the guidance she needs to live a life that will best prepare her for life everlasting. She stated that she opposes birth control, abortion, divorce, and homosexuality based on the church's teachings. She says that, “Adherence to a life directed by the laws and rules of the church never leaves me unhappy or uneasy.”

4 This is a reference to a fictional town in North Carolina that served as the setting for two television sitcoms, The Andy Griffith Show and Mayberry R.F.D. that ran from 1960 to 1971 presenting an idyllic view of life. 93

YHN spoke at length about the importance of Ave Maria for her children. She was pleased that she did not have to worry about whom her children's pals were or what they might be up to. It was also important to her that her children were around the college students who were, "without their mother's urging," regularly attending Mass because they found it important in their lives. She felt this was a wonderful model for her children. YHN was also pleased that her oldest daughter could attend a Catholic university in their very neighborhood. YHN explained how important the crucifixion of Jesus is to her, stating that Catholics relive Calvary in the Mass. She also emphasized that she does not worship Mary. She venerates her but she only worships the Trinity. She emphasized that Mary intercedes, persuasively, for believers. "Are you going to do what your mother asks you to do?" she ask me. Through the course of the interview she expressed a number of times her deep veneration, respect, and love of Mary. RNI was a single young adult female who recently moved to Ave Maria. She felt there was a strong sense of Catholic identity in the 1960s and 1970s. She feels older Catholics still retain that. "Younger Catholics are more likely to view Catholicism as heritage - 'I come from a very Catholic family' rather than 'I am Catholic.'" She feels the Catholic identity, as a sense of knowing who you are, deteriorated during the 1980s and 1990s but the experiential knowledge lived on. She believed the self-conscious awareness of one’s Catholic identity was re-emerging. She identified Ave Maria with that re-emergence saying that, like so many in Ave Maria, she took comfort in the Pope's assertion that "It is the springtime of the Church." When ask to clarify, RNI said she felt that the Church was once again assuming its rightful place of leadership in the lives of Catholics. She felt that liberal media misinterpreted much of Vatican II by listening to liberal church theologians. Now that the more conservative Catholic tradition was expressing its views of Vatican II, more conservative Catholics were again finding their footing and their voice. Ave Maria, she felt, provided an important context for conservative Catholics such as herself who were involved in these changes. "… Ave Maria provides me with a network of support for my faith. I am renewed in the context of the town through things like regular meditation at the Chapel and worship at the Oratory." TGB, an elderly male resident, expressed a similar viewpoint. “After Vatican II the Church tried too hard to be appealing to Protestants. This movement led to the dilution of religious vocations and to the abandonment of the church by priests and nuns.” He was hopeful that under Pope Benedict's direction the Church would enjoy a revival. He believed Ave Maria

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was a sign and a source of that renewal. Both he and his wife enjoyed the Tridentine Mass. They were happy that it was offered several times a week in Ave Maria, but would have liked to see it offered daily. TGB drew a number of distinctions between the conservative residents of Ave Maria and the far right wing of Catholicism. Consistent with Weaver and Appleby and also with Cueno, TGB talked at length about several communities that believe there has been no legitimate Pope since the 1960s and that believe Vatican II was apostasy. He emphasized that the people he knew in Ave Maria did not share those beliefs. According to TGB, folks in Ave Maria supported the Pope and recognized Vatican II as a legitimate, if poorly interpreted, council. Throughout the interviews a common theme was that, for many, Ave Maria offered an environment conducive to the practice of their faith that they had not found elsewhere. EDC’s comments represented this view:

Back in the secular world my life is my private business. We are trained to hide things, including things of faith. Here, we learn to reveal things. I will never forget the first time I went to lunch with someone here and he stopped to pray before he ate. I was so surprised. But it was OK. No one looked at it as silly or out of place. It is in an atmosphere like this that things can happen spontaneously. Someone decides to take a walk and say his Rosary. He invites someone else to join him. The next thing you know seventy-five people are doing so together every evening. I think of it as the reverse broken window. The first person who prays over lunch is accepted for doing so and the act and its acceptance give others permission to do the same.

One unexpected finding was that several respondents who moved to Ave Maria because of its reputation as a conservative Catholic place found it was not conservative enough for them. One respondent who moved to Ave Maria specifically to be in a conservative Catholic community reported his family was considering leaving because the theologians at the university were not conservative enough, the university had become too much like Notre Dame, and the community was considering supporting the location of a genetics lab within its boundaries.

7.3 - Material Cultural Traces Embodying the Interpretive Tradition

The analysis of interviews and observations indicates that the community’s domain interest is embodied in the material cultural traces that form Ave Maria’s landscape. Several of those traces are discussed below.

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7.3.1 - Oratory

Figure 7-2 The Oratory during the installation of the sculpture The Annunciation

My analysis of observations and interviews indicates that the Oratory (Figure 7-2) centripetally organizes the community. It is the most obvious “thing” in the town center, a church building that seats 1,100 worshipers. The commercial portion of the town center is arranged as a parabola (Figure 7-3) and the Oratory sits at the focal point of that parabola. Textual data collected on-site indicates the Oratory is approximately 108-feet high. The LiDAR (laser) data indicates the Oratory stands approximately 50-feet higher than the buildings in the town center that surround it. At the peak of the church and above its main entrance is a 10- foot tall Celtic cross that adds to the sense of the Oratory’s immense height. The Oratory can be seen from every neighborhood in the development. Respondents identified the Oratory as both the geographic and spiritual center of their lives. One resident explained it this way:

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The church in the center of town was surprisingly important. However it was a ‘jacks or better to open’ sort of thing. We looked at other towns designed like Ave Maria that had a big empty field in the middle of them. They just didn't feel right to us. The church in the center of town geographically is nice but it was the church in the emotional center of the town that made this place special. They built the town around the church in more ways than one.

Figure 7-3 This aerial shows the situation of the Oratory (turquoise) relative to other buildings in La Piazza (rose buildings east of the main street) and the University mall (yellow area west of the main street)

In a promotional piece for the development, another resident wrote:

Ave Maria is an appealing place, where you can hear the peal of children's laughter, and where you can hear the Oratory's bells a-pealing, drawing students and townfolk alike to the heart of the community, to the Heart of Christ. (Ave Maria University "Come Visit Ave Maria").

The Oratory’s geographic position and height reinforce that view establishing it as a fixed point from which residents of Ave Maria can navigate, both cognitively and spiritually.

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The importance of the Oratory to the community of Ave Maria is reflected in construction photos showing the first buildings out of the ground in Ave Maria (some of which can be found at http://www.avemaria.com/ConstructionPhotos.aspx?d0=2006 ). A review of them indicates that site preparation work and construction on the Oratory were a priority for the community from the outset. As the Oratory takes shape the space around it is progressively transformed from tomato fields to an organized settlement.

Figure 7-4 A representation of the completed relief sculpture The Annunciation with the guilt statues of the apostles in the background

The Oratory is incomplete at this point. Future plans call for the eventual construction of a 65-foot crucifix including a 40-foot corpus (Body of Christ) to the front of the main entrance (Dillion 2008). There are also plans for a freestanding bell tower. When viewed from the front the Oratory holds the shape of a bishop’s miter (Figure 7-2). The shape is recursively employed in the front façade for emphasis. The Oratory is oriented such that on March 25, the annual Feast of the Annunciation in Catholic tradition, the sun rises directly behind the church. Since La Piazza is oriented relative to

98 the Oratory, the orientation of the commercial center of the development is set around sunrise on this Catholic feast day The focal point of the front entrance of the Oratory is a relief sculpture called The Annunciation (Figure 7-4). Marton Varo, a notable Hungarian sculptor, was commissioned to carve the massive piece out of 80-tons of marble. The finished sculpture weighs between 50 and 60 tons, is 35-feet tall, and at its base it is 31-feet wide. Immediately across the street from the Oratory is the University’s open-air mall (Figures 7-3 and 7-5) known as the Academic Mall. This mall extends west to east from a large water retention area at the back of the University property to Ave Maria Boulevard, the main street through the development that divides La Piazza from the University’s property. The mall, framed along the north side by the student center and along the south side by the university library and academic building, forms a transportation backbone for students. The view across the west end of the mall stretches over the adjacent wetlands. The Oratory forms an impressive terminal vista to the view across the east end of the mall.

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Figure 7-5 East end of the Academic Mall showing fountains in the foreground, the library and classroom building in the background, and the open grass area along the right side

They were installing the relief sculpture The Annunciation at the time of the interviews. Many of the informal conversations I had during my field study revolved around the Oratory and the important role it plays in the lives of residents. I made no effort to track this number because it was obvious that people were referring to the Oratory both as a noun in the sense of a structure and a metonymy for both the structure and all of the activities, for example the installation of the sculpture, that occur there. Many of the respondents felt particular sites in town were holy or sacred. Several respondents mentioned that their faith teaches that any site set aside for the celebration of Eucharist is sacred. One respondent summed it this way,” "A church is usually an indication of a holy site. Consecrated churches house the Blessed Sacrament (in a tabernacle) which makes the site sacred. The presence of the Blessed Sacrament also makes a chapel sacred.”

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Consistent with these views, fifteen of sixteen respondents (94%) who completed the mapping exercise in the interview identified the Oratory as a location that was important to them. This number is impressive when compared, for example, to the eleven of sixteen (69%) who identified their home as important. Eleven out of seventeen (65%) who completed interviews identified the Oratory as a holy or sacred site.

7.3.2 - Adoration Chapel

Figure 7-6 Adoration Chapel, a site in the center of the town established for devotional meditation, contemplation, and prayer

While the Oratory forms the most central and impressive material cultural trace important to Ave Maria’s cultural identity, it is by no means the only one. The university campus, which is open to use by the residents of Ave Maria, features a variety of material cultural traces. The most significant of these to Ave Maria residents is the Perpetual Adoration Chapel, or as it is known to the residents, simply Adoration Chapel. Adoration Chapel (Figure 7-6) is situated cattycorner to the south across the main street from the Oratory and is the first building one comes to when entering the university campus from La Piazza. It is located at the east end of the Canizaro Library building. Despite its privileged location, Adoration Chapel is much less apparent than the Oratory. Beneath a covered walkway that forms the main entrance one finds a life-size gold gilded statue of Mary. Next to the main door is a much smaller unassuming cast bronze statue of Jesus as a beggar. Inside, the chapel has seating for approximately twenty people and is open twenty- four hours a day. The consecrated

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host is always on display at the front of the chapel. The goal of the university is to foster the perpetual adoration of the consecrated host in the chapel. In the practice of perpetual adoration, members unite to provide at least one adorer in devotional meditation in the site of the consecrated host twenty-four hours a day for seven days a week. Thirteen of sixteen respondents (81%) who participated in the mapping exercise identified Adoration Chapel as important to them. Eleven of seventeen (65%) who completed interviews identified the Adoration Chapel as a holy or sacred site. In speaking of Adoration Chapel, one respondent stated that it is particularly holy because “at it believers can gaze upon the very presence of Jesus.”

Figure 7-7 Memorial to the Unborn is an example of the intensity of conservative Catholic beliefs in Ave Maria. To the left and behind the memorial is a bronze statue portraying Mary, Joseph, and Jesus as an infant.

7.3.3 - Memorial to the Unborn

In addition to buildings, many artifacts on the university’s campus embody Ave Maria’s worldview and way of life. Two of these illustrate the broad range of these cultural traces. 102

The first is a memorial to unborn children (Figure 7-7) located just outside the main entrance to the student union building. A cross is attached to a broken column and behind the cross and column is a cast bronze sculpture of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus as an infant. The inscription on the column reads, “Dedicated to the sanctity of life and memory of all children who died unborn their names known only to God.” This memorial reifies the community’s pro- life views. In addition to the pro-life monument, an array of publications, bumper stickers, and tee shirts embody the community’s pro-life viewpoint.

7.3.4 - Klucik Memorial

There is one last material cultural trace that stands apart from the others. It is unusual because it is not a commissioned construction. Instead it is constructed organically by the residents of Ave Maria.

Figure 7-8 The Klucik memorial is an emergent trace

On August 2, 2010 Alex Klucik, an 18-year old resident of Ave Maria, was killed when the car he was driving left a back road in the development ending upside down in a water retention pond. Klucik had been the captain of his high school football team, recently graduated high school, and was an incoming freshman at Ave Maria University. His death was a tragedy to both his family and the community (WBBH News 2010). 103

Shortly after the accident, the residents constructed a memorial to Klucik. They made a cross using discarded timber found on the site of the accident which they erected near the place the car left the ground before it flew into the pond. They added to the cross pieces of the vehicle they found in the pond and small personal items of their own they wanted to leave at the site. While I was doing my fieldwork one of my respondents asked if I had been out to visit the memorial. He explained it was a place residents went to “pray for Klucik and contemplate their own lives.” This quiet memorial (Figure 7-8) at the back of the development roughly constructed of discarded lumber, remnants of an accident, and bits of private lives lent a deep sense of meaning to the embodied expressions of faith more formally memorialized at the center of town. The worldview embodied in the 10-foot tall Celtic cross at the top of the Oratory entrance at the center of town was also embodied in a coarse timber cross on the banks of a water retention pond at the back of the development.

7.4 - Performances Embodying the Interpretive Tradition

Dynamic elements of a community’s interpretive traditions are also embodied in its performances. While in Ave Maria, I observed a number of performances that embody the conservative Catholic interpretive tradition traced across the landscape of Ave Maria.

7.4.1 - Rosary Walk

Figure 7-9 The route the Rosary Walk followed around the campus the evening I participated as recorded by a GPS

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The Rosary Walk (Figure 7-9) is an intriguing example of performances in Ave Maria. Each evening while the university is in session a group, usually exclusively of university students, gather on the campus. The group leave the gathering point at a prescribed time and walk three-quarters of a mile around the main campus. The walkers walk the entire circuit without stopping. As they begin their walk they also begin reciting a liturgy they refer to as “praying the Rosary.” The night I made the walk, we completed the circuit near the end of the ‘Fourth Mystery’ and formed a circle in the sidewalk at the gathering point. There we completed the Fourth and Fifth Mysteries and the concluding prayer. After the walk was over, I talked with several of the students who were on the walk. They were surprised to learn that the Rosary Walk was so highly regarded by the permanent residents. Knowing the liturgies, participating in liturgical events, and developing friendships in the context of these types of events are hallmarks of those who are full members of the Ave Maria community. The university students enjoy a luminal membership status in the community. Most are not full members in that they do not control property rights. However, other than property rights and the commitment to the future such rights represented, they seem to be accepted by the community as full members. Six respondents commented at length about the Rosary Walk in the course of discussions and approximately half of those interviewed found it an important or very important dimension of the community’s life. While permanent residents of the community generally do not participate in the walk, they appreciate watching as the students pass each evening.

7.4.2 - Mass

Mass (Figure 7-10) is one of the clearest convergences of interpretive tradition and performativity. Shortly before the beginning of the service, congregants assemble in the sanctuary, variously sitting and kneeling. Most dip their fingers in holy water located at each doorway before entering the sanctuary and then cross themselves, genuflect upon reaching a pew, and enter the pew. While people who know one another often acknowledge each other with a brief nod there is little other acknowledgement of the presence of others. Those leading the service process in from the sacristy at the beginning of the service. The sacristy is a small room to the right of the front of the church. An altar boy or girl draped in a white frock carries a crucifix on a long standard and the other celebrants, in various raiment, follow. When the service concludes the priest and others who are leading the service form a processional, exit the sanctuary, and return to the sacristy. The congregants remain in meditative 105

silence until inclined to leave. Usually they perform many of the same rituals in parting they perform in entering including a brief nod to those whom they know, genuflecting upon leaving the pew, crossing themselves with holy water, and walking quietly from the narthex. This event reproduces the community’s liturgical history reinforcing the understanding of the meaning of that history in the local community. There are components suggestive of an emergent structure of local adaptations to their liturgical tradition. Who worshippers sit with, where they customarily sit in the Oratory, how they handle infants and very young children, the lesson by the priest, who the priest mentions in the pastoral prayer, are each small adaptations. The celebration of the Tridentine (extraordinary form) Latin Mass twice a week and the Novus Ordo (ordinary form) Latin Mass several times a week are larger adaptations, ones that speak more directly to the community’s conservative Catholic worldview while retaining its position as a member of the Roman Catholic Church.

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Figure 7-10 Worshipers gathering shortly before the celebration of the Mass

Thirty of thirty-four respondents (88%) indicated that Sunday Mass was very important to them. It was important, though not very important, to the one remaining Catholic respondent. Twenty-one respondents (62%) also indicated that weekday Mass was very important to them while another nine (26%) indicated it was important. The enforcement of the community’s understanding of the meaning of Eucharist was one of the hard boundaries between the Ave Maria community and me. I was welcomed, even encouraged, to attend Mass. However my understanding of the meaning of Eucharist, and hence my interpretive tradition, was different from theirs. Therefore, I was unwelcomed to receive the Eucharist. Full membership involves more than simply knowing the community’s baseline knowledge and participating in its ongoing life. It involves a commitment to the application of the community’s interpretive tradition in day- to-day circumstances. A full member of the Ave Maria community has to be committed to the

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Figure 7-11 Students study the conservative Catholic interpretive tradition at Donahue Academy day-to-day practice of conservative Catholicism in the areal area of Ave Maria. In Ave Maria, only full members participate in Eucharist.

7.4.3 - Donahue Academy

Donahue Academy (Figure 7-11) is a private school that provides a conservative Catholic curriculum to students from Kindergarten through Grade 12. The school is not yet a Catholic school (though the web site indicates it has applied for recognition by the local diocese). It performs a significant role in embodying Ave Maria’s interpretive tradition through providing a religious education to many of the community’s children. The school has an enrollment of 200 students. Not all of the students in Ave Maria go to the private school. Those students who do not attend the private school are bused to local public schools. Students, faculty, staff, sometimes parents, and even members of the Ave Maria community, some of whom have no children in the school, gather to celebrate Mass at the beginning of each academic day. Mass is a required component of the students’ education. The

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curriculum incorporates a religious track throughout grade school and combines it with a focus on the ‘great books.’ There is an emphasis on grammar in Grades 1 to 4, logic in Grades 5 to 8, and rhetoric in Grades 9 to 12. At least three nuns teach fulltime at the school including one who teaches the theology components of the curriculum. Class size is reported to be approximately 12 students. Several respondents identified the welfare of their children as a very important component of their decision to move to Ave Maria and indicated that the school was important to them in making their relocation decision. This account was representative of the comments by these respondents:

Time was getting short and my wife said, 'If not here, then where?' I heard the words pop out of my mouth and wondered where they had come from, "Ave Maria, Florida'. Strangely my wife had read about Ave Maria years before and never said anything, but she knew immediately where I was talking about. We checked on-line, arranged to come down to visit, and 15 minutes after walking into the school we knew we were moving to Ave Maria. The school felt right. The town felt right. The importance of the surrounding and environment that my kids are in was important to me then and they are so much more important to me now.

7.5 - Media Representations of Ave Maria

The media’s representations of the development share the view that the pursuit of a conservative Catholic way of life is the central domain of Ave Maria. A number of print articles bare headlines such as “’Pizza Pope’ builds a Catholic heaven” (Allen-Mills 2006), “City of God: Tom Monaghan's coming Catholic utopia” (Reilly 2005), “City of God: Catholic Fla. Town Opens” (ABC News 2007), and “Testing Their Faith” (Thorner 2009). The articles, like their headlines, often reflect mixed regard for the development and one of its founders, Tom Monaghan. However their characterization of the town is generally consistent with the description of the town’s domain offered above. For example, one article notes, “The town is centered around an 1,100-seat Roman Catholic church and a traditional Catholic university. … No adult book stores or strip clubs adorn the town, and local businesses are urged not to sell contraceptives or birth control” (ABC News 2007). Another describes it saying, “Ave Maria, an enclave of orthodox Catholicism anchored by a fledgling university” (Thorner 2009). While many of the reports mention that the co-developer, Barron Collier Companies, dissuades the notion that Ave Maria is a ‘Catholic’ or ‘religious’ town, most also discount Barron Collier’s viewpoint. 109

Tom Monaghan is frequently mentioned in media coverage of the town. Most identify him as the founder of Domino’s Pizza and indicate he sold it for one billion dollars, much of which he subsequently reinvested in the town and university. His Catholic faith is typically characterized as either ‘conservative’ or ‘orthodox’ and frequently reference is made to his upbringing in a Catholic orphanage. Monaghan is portrayed as leaving a strong conservative Catholic imprint on both the design and character of the development (Reilly 2005, Meadows 2006, Cornwell 2011). Many of the accounts mention Monaghan’s early assertions that the town would not permit the sale of birth control or pornography nor the performance of abortions. They also note that when challenged by the ACLU he retreated from his position that these would be prohibited in town and adopted the position that they would be discouraged in town and prohibited on the university campus. There is also frequent mention of Ave Maria University in media pieces. Most mention that it is the first Catholic oriented university constructed in the United States in the last 40 years. Many identify it as holding a conservative or orthodox approach to Catholicism. For example, one article discusses comments by the university's president, Nicholas J Healy, that future students should ‘help rebuild the city of God’ in a country suffering from ‘catastrophic cultural collapse’ (Allen-Mills 2006). Several articles focus around the eviction of a religious order after an alleged homosexual advance by one of the sisters to a university student went unreported (AveHerald.com 2010a, Hale 2010). There is also coverage of the university’s on-again off- again relationship with Father Joseph Fessio, a theologian reputed to hold highly respected conservative Catholic credentials, who served as the university’s provost and later as a “theologian in residence” (Reilly 2005, Miguel and Zoldan 2007, Staats 2009). The media appears to sense the emblematic quality of the Oratory. Almost every media source doing a general piece on the town mentions the Oratory. Typical of those is this mention, “The town will be centred around a 100 ft tall oratory and the first Catholic university to be built in America for 40 years”(Allen-Mills 2006). Some also mention future plans for a 65-foot tall crucifix to be constructed in the forecourt of the Oratory (Dillion 2008). Dramatic shots of the front of the Oratory form much of the visual content behind the introduction of Ave Maria in the PBS documentary Florida – Heaven On Earth? (Frazer. 2010) and CNN’s Celestial City (Kaye. 2007). It also forms the opening shot of a computer generated movie of the Oratory found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdJT_LV6zzA. A children’s

110 book that discusses Eucharist in the setting of Ave Maria, Monty, Cat of Ave Maria (Sette 2008), features on its cover the hero of the tale seated in front of the Oratory. A substantial amount of recent coverage revolves around the controversial siting of a branch campus of Jackson Lab in the development. The issue addresses the domain of the Ave Maria community because the lab is reported to be tied to human stem cell research that many conservative Catholics find reprehensible. The media followed the story from the announcement of the proposed campus through the eventual withdrawal of the proposal. There are media voices that do not find Ave Maria members and institutions conservative enough in their views. Those voices are often expressed in web blogs. The criticism seems generally directed at Tom Monaghan and Ave Maria University and often relates to human sexuality, particularly pro-choice, issues (For example, see Montesino de Stuart Variously dated). Not all of the media coverage addresses Ave Maria’s focus on conservative Catholicism. For example, the Naples Daily News (aka naplesnews.com) ran a series of articles on the developers’ construction of a stewardship community district, enacted as Florida law by a special bill passed by the state legislature, to govern the development. According to the series, the stewardship district, under the control of the developers, has taxing authority to pay for public infrastructure such as parks, schools, and hospitals. The paper holds that:

The law gives Monaghan and Barron Collier Cos. more power than any Florida developer in at least 24 years, power perhaps not seen since the days of the early 20thcentury land boom. The law makes landowners, not registered voters, the ultimate authority in Ave Maria. The law ensures Monaghan and Barron Collier Cos., as the largest landowners, can control Ave Maria’s government forever. (Dillion 2009)

Non-print representations of the domain of Ave Maria are generally consistent with those in print media. For example, a PBS film titled Florida – Heaven On Earth, describes Ave Maria saying, “Monaghan invested more than $200,000,000 into his City of God and former tomato and vegetable fields began to sprout uniquely laid out subdivisions” (Frazer. 2010). CNN, in a reported titled “Celestial City” said, “This is Ave Maria, a Catholic utopia founded and funded by billionaire businessman Tom Monaghan, the ticket, he hopes, to eternal salvation” (Kaye. 2007).

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7.6 - Conclusion

Results from the analysis of qualitative data collected through interviews and surveys, observations, and discourse analysis demonstrates a high degree of homogeneity around the shared commitment of the residents of Ave Maria to a day-to-day life of conservative Catholicism. For most of the residents, this shared commitment is either their primary or secondary reason for moving to Ave Maria. The material cultural traces and performances found in the development embody this commitment.

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CHAPTER EIGHT

RESULTS – OBJECTIVE 2

My second objective is to characterize the spatial configuration of the material cultural traces and performances identified in Objective 1. I use spatial analyses to identify the regions of the development that contain the community’s interpretive resources. Three avenues of analyses provide those results. I develop a GISc/GIS ontology to promote a more formal structuring of thirty-five cultural traces. I conduct GIS clustering and correlation analysis based on sixteen cultural traces categorized as reifications and ninety-six locations identified by respondents as non-residential ‘important places’ in the community. I develop a morphogenetic definition of character areas in two morphological periods. Finally, I use space syntax to analyze how the spatial configuration of the development influenced natural movement in the development.

8.1 - Ontology of Domain Related Material Cultural Traces and Performances

The first step in working with the data collected in Objective 1 is to formalize it for use in Objective 2. I am using a GIS ontology to facilitate that formalization. The goal of my ontology is the representation of material cultural traces and performances, originally collected as natural language data, in a GIS. The sites of Ave Maria’s domain related knowledges and activities form the pool of potential geographic spaces for this analysis. The ontology formalizes the Ave Maria community domain around two primary purposes, each composed of two primary functions, for a total of four primary functions. Table 8-1 represents this global structure of the ontology. The relationship among the categories of this structure is illustrated in Figure 8-1.

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Table 8-1 The global structure of the ontology used to formalize qualitative data for utilization in GIS analysis

Domain Purposes Functions Ave Maria Community Repertoire - normative Participation - Activities for the Domain - a day-to-day understanding of an interpretive purpose of reproducing an way of life focused around tradition interpretive tradition or a conservative Catholic enriching social relationships interpretative tradition Reification - Things that facilitate the reproduction of an interpretive tradition Practice - day-to-day utilization Application - Activities that or extension of an interpretive utilize an interpretive tradition tradition to accomplish the domain purpose Learning - Activities that extend an interpretive tradition through the intentional production, modification, or elimination of aspects of the tradition

Each level in this structure forms a concept or class. The lower a class is in the hierarchy the more specific it is. Each class is specified by various properties that describe the features and attributes of the class (referred to in this system as slots). Each property can take various values depending on the type of property it is. Lower classes inherit the properties of higher classes in the hierarchy. The most general class of the ontology is the Ave Maria Domain, the day-to-day practice of a conservative Catholic lifestyle in Ave Maria. It is spatially focused inside the boundaries of the development and outside of its residential areas. The ontology is then subdivided into the classes of Repertoire and Practice. The Repertoire class contains elements of the Ave Maria Domain that embody the normative, interpretive tradition of the community. The Practice class contains elements of the domain that embody the convergence of the interpretive tradition with present circumstances.

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Figure 8-1 The relationships among the global elements of the ontology are identified in this illustration

The Repertoire class subdivides into the Reifications and Participations classes. Reifications, material cultural traces, conveyed explicit knowledge while Participations, activities, conveyed tacit knowledge. The combination of tacit and explicit knowledges in the repertoire forms the community’s existing interpretive tradition. This tradition affords members a conservative Catholic view of the world that they employ in meeting the challenges and opportunities of their day-to-day lives. The Practice class subdivides into the Learning and Application classes. In the circumstance of each present moment, the community encounters various needs to extend, redirect, dismiss, reinterpret, or modify its interpretive tradition. Learning emphasizes the production of meaning in the context of these emergent circumstances. Application emphasizes the use of the interpretive tradition to meet the challenges of a present circumstance in a manner that largely reproduces its existing understanding.

Thirty-five individual instances form the knowledge base for my project. Only thirty-two of them, those constituting the ‘repertoire’, are analyzed. The remaining three instances are included to illustrate the ‘practice’ components of the ontology. Using the ontology, I classified the thirty-two instances in the repertoire into sixteen instances as reifications and sixteen as participatory. In doing so the ontology instrumented the

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logical separation of these instances into classes providing the formality necessary to rationally analysis and represent the data in a GIS.

8.1.1 - Reifications

Material cultural traces identified as reifications took a range of forms. However, they were not all relevant to my research because many of them were simply not geographically significant. Those that were not geographically significant were not included in the study. Reifications are identified as geographically significant when:

• they are “too big to be manipulated” (i.e. the Oratory) • they are installed objects other than inscriptions (i.e. the Apostle Statues above the Oratory main entrance) • or when they are stand alone objects that could have been manipulated but that are also identified by the community as significant (gilt state of Mary)

For example, the gilt statue of Mary at the main entrance of the Adoration Chapel, mentioned by several members of the community as significant because it brought to mind aspects of faith that members should cultivate, is geographically significant in this analysis. The statue is small enough that, with effort, it can be moved. Despite the fact that it is not too big to be manipulated, several respondents identified it as significant. Further, the statue obviously embodied important aspects of the community’s interpretive tradition. Memorial pavers in the forecourt of the Oratory inscribed with someone’s name or memorial stones in the Oratory’s exterior walls, neither of which are identified as significant to the community’s practice by members of the community, are both installed and would have been difficult to have been moved. However, none of the respondents identified them as significant. Further, while their significance to individuals or families is apparent, they do not appear to represent a significant embodiment of the interpretive tradition to the community. The pavers are not considered geographically significant reifications. A number of material cultural traces that clearly qualified as geographically significant are not categorized as reifications because they are not germane to the community’s domain. A representative sample includes a fountain next to the coffee house (only one respondent felt it

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held even nominal domain significance), the university library and field house both of which are named after major donors, and a museum that focuses on the life of Tom Monaghan. Fourteen of the sixteen material cultural traces categorized as reifications are shown in Figure 8-2. The other two (id numbers 0 and 1) fall outside the area displayed in the figure. The actual locations of the displayed traces have been generalized so that the identification number of each reification can be seen.

Id # Name Format 0 Angel Gabriel's Annunciation to Mary Statue 1 Alex Klucik Shrine Site 2 "One Body" Statue 3 "Remembrance" Statue 4 Unborn Children Memorial Memorial 5 "A Quiet Moment" Statue 6 "Noah's Ark" Statue 7 "St. Kevin" in Prayer Statue 8 The Annunciation Sculpture Site Site 9 Blessed Mother Statue 10 "Whatsoever You Do" Statue 11 Oratory Building 12 Celtic Cross atop Oratory Facade 13 The Annunciation Relief Sculpture Facade 14 Adoration Chapel Building 15 Apostle Statues Facade

Figure 8-2 The generalized locations of reifications

8.1.2 - Participations

Performances that are focused primarily on the reproduction of the interpretive tradition are categorized as participations. They are distinguished from practice in that their focus is on reproducing the interpretive tradition, not applying it to novel circumstances of the present moment. Participations are divided into two groups, mobile and non-mobile. Mobile participations are those where the members focus on following a route in the execution of the activity. Non- 117

mobile participations are those where co-presence is more the focus. Members may have milled about but the movement was secondary to the experience of being with other members. The non- mobile participatory activities reported in my study (Table 8-2) illustrate how the ontology developed as a part of the study contributed to the systematic analysis of the spatial data the study generated. Protégé, the open source program used to develop the ontology, provides a great deal of useful structure for constructing the ontology and populating the knowledge base. However, it is lacking in its capacity to produce reports of either the ontology or the knowledge base. Therefore, Appendix C contains a number of screen shots from Protégé. The first screen shot on each page identifies the attributes associated with a class in the ontology and some of the key properties of each attribute. The second screen shot on each page identifies instances in the knowledge base associated with the class.

8.2 - GIS analysis of the ontological spaces of Ave Maria’s Repertoire

The data collected qualitatively is spatially analyzed after it is more formally represented in GIS. Qualitative analysis of the data suggests that there is a cultural core to the community. Spatial analysis is used to quantitatively identify and characterize spatial configuration of the repertoire and to explore whether there is quantitative support for the view of a cultural core. The advantages of doing so are that it provides a nascent view of how place-based communities of practice employ spatial configuration to emphasize the geographical embodiments of their domain focus and it facilitates future comparative studies of this type of community. As mentioned above, my study does not employ random sampling to select respondents to interview. The following spatial statistics are not based, therefore, on random sampling. While the statistics are believed to be indicative of the population in general they can only be said to reliably indicate the subpopulation of those who were actually interviewed.

8.2.1 - Reifications

Figure 8-3 shows the location of the selected Ave Maria reifications in the left panel. It shows the location of ninety-six non-residential sites identified as ‘important places’ during the mapping component of the interview in the right panel. Visual inspection of the figure suggested a strong correlation between the reifications and the ‘important places.’ While both had outliers, both also appeared to have a significant number of clustered locations co-located in the vicinity of the town center. GIS analysis supports this view. 118

Figure 8-3 The locations of reifications are shown in the left panel and 'important places' in the right panel. Visual inspections suggested they are correlated.

GIS analysis begins by identifying both ‘reifications’ and ‘important places’ as points on separate GIS layers. Reifications are the material cultural traces that embody the community’s interpretive tradition such as statutes and buildings. ‘Important places’ are places specifically identified by respondents during the mapping portion of the interview as sites in the community that are important to them. The sites were located in the field by GPS and later further verified by comparison to aerial overlays. Average Nearest Neighbor analysis is conducted on both sets to determine if they are significantly clustered. A Moran’s Index is used to determine spatial dependency between the two sets. A Natural Neighbor analysis of the ‘important places’ data is developed to produce a surface of predicted values useful for estimating the geographic extents of concentrations.

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8.2.1.1 - Average Nearest Neighbor An Average Nearest Neighbor (Nearest Neighbor) analysis of both data sets determines if the location of their features is random, dispersed, or clustered. The null hypothesis is that the feature placement is random. Nearest Neighbor analysis of the reifications data (Figure 8-4) returns a Z-score of -4.570 and a p-value of .000. The negative Z-score is indicative of spatial clustering. The p-value suggests that there is little chance a Z-score of this magnitude would occur by chance. The null hypothesis is therefore rejected. This indicates that the material cultural traces embodying the community’s interpretive tradition are geographically clustered. The Z-value score of -13.348 and a p-value of .000 is returned by the Nearest Neighbor analysis of the’ important places’ data (Figure 8-5) and is also indicative of spatial clustering. According to the p-value there is little chance this result is a chance occurrence. However, as mentioned previously, a number of respondents identified the same locations as important. Co- located features can skew the mean distance of the features to the low side indicating clustering where there is none. Since the ‘important places’ data set contains ninety-six features, the co-located features are aggregated. Aggregating reduces the set to twenty-nine features. The Nearest Neighbor analysis of the aggregated ‘important places’ data (Figure 8-6) returns a Z-value score of -3.560 and a p-value of .000. The negative Z-score is again indicative of spatial clustering and the p- value indicates that there is little chance of a Z-score of this magnitude occurring by chance. The null hypothesis is therefore rejected.

8.2.1.2 - Moran’s Index A Moran’s Index analysis (Figure 8-7) assesses the likelihood of a correlation between the locations of aggregated important places with counts of reifications that are within walking distance of them. The null hypothesis is that they are randomly distributed and there is no spatial autocorrelation. The Moran’s Index returns a Z-score of 2.103 and a p-value of .035. The positive Z-score is indicative of spatial clustering. The p-value suggests that there is substantial evidence a Z- score of this magnitude would not occur by chance. The null hypothesis is therefore rejected. The proximity of ‘important places’ to other ‘important places’ with similar numbers of reifications within walking distance appears correlated. This is a useful, though minor, finding in 120 that it supported the view that domain related reifications and the popular ‘important places’ to residents are spatially related through their co-location. The drawback to this analysis is that both the set of aggregated ‘important places’ (twenty-nine total of which twenty-three are within a quarter-mile range of at least one reification) and the set of reifications are small.

8.2.1.3 - Natural Neighbor Analysis Natural neighbor analysis is used in my study to construct an interpolated surface showing the likely areas of concentration of popular ‘important places.’ The surface is an ‘elevation model’ where the elevation indicates the likelihood a respondent will identify an ‘important place’ within its bounds. Since sixteen respondents participated in the mapping exercise the highest elevation would have an upper value of sixteen indicating that nearly every respondent would have located an ‘important place’ within its bounds. Figure 8-8 shows the areas estimated to contain non-residential ‘important places’ throughout the development. The entire area of the development that falls inside a polygon constructed between the outlier points is represented in a medium green color. This is the extent of area actually analyzed by the natural neighbor algorithm. While at least one respondent identified one of the outlying locations as important, points in this medium green area are unlikely to be identified as important to even one respondent. Figure 8-9 focuses on the area of higher concentrations located in and around the town center. Buildings from the town center are superimposed to provide points of reference. Nine boundaries are established to summarize the interpolation. The boundary with the lowest value (light blue) indicates areas where one respondent of the sixteen that participated in the mapping portion of the interview would likely identify a non-residential ‘important place’ in the development. The second bounded area (light green) is an area where more than one but less than three respondents would likely identify an ‘important place.’ Because the boundaries summarize a continuous surface, the values bounded range between 1.01 and 3.00 respondents. The upper limit is the boundary summarizing the area where it is estimated that between 15.01 and 16 respondents would locate an ‘important place.’ This elevation model reaches its peak around the Oratory. Half or more of the respondents would identify important places in the area that extends from the commercial area of the town center surrounding the Oratory west across most of University Mall. The noticeable area of concentration outside this peak area extends from the backside of the commercial area surrounding the Oratory, north to the private school, and east to the Publix grocery. 121

The outliers in this data include: one respondent’s identification of the golf course at the south end of the development; one’s identification of a park in the south end; two identifications of a park in the extreme north end of the development; the Klucik memorial identified by one respondent; and the open space located at the center of one of the residential subdivisions where children in the subdivision played identified by one respondent; the water park was identified by two respondents and the university field house was identified by one respondent. These outliers show that respondents realized that they could identify sites outside of the town center. In the area of high concentration identified by the Natural Neighbor analysis, the most popular sites are on the University’s property. The Oratory is the only site identified as important by all sixteen respondents. Thirteen identify Adoration Chapel, eleven simply identify the University without specifying a particular site, five identify The Annunciation sculpture site, and various other sites on the campus are identified once or twice. The most popular site in the area of high concentration not related to the University are Queen Mary’s Pub (7), The Bean Coffee Shop (4), and the Tropical Smoothie (3). Respondents identified several other retail establishments once or twice.

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Figure 8-4 Natural Neighbor analysis showing the predictive surface of 'important places' in the town center relative to the whole development

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Figure 8-5 Natural Neighbor Analysis focused on the predictive surface of 'important places' in the town center

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8.2.2 - Participation

Locations that serve as the sites for participatory activities are represented in two ways. Mobile activities that follow routes are represented as lines. Non-mobile activities that occur in an area are represented as polygons. I report three of the routes the Ave Maria community employs in participatory activities (Figure 8-10). The ‘Rosary Walk’ was recorded by GPS when I participated in the event and I subsequently import it to the GIS for analysis. I was interviewing a respondent in the coffee house when children from the private school passed through caroling. He reported the route the children had followed from the private school through town and back to the school. I reconstruct the route from his report for analysis. The processional route is a best estimate from the descriptions provided by several respondents during interviews. The spaces for participation through co-presence employed by the community (Figure 8- 11) are represented with some indication of the forms of participation identified at each site. Scaling makes it difficult to identify several of these sites. However, I retain the same scaling as the route exhibit (Figure8-10) to provide orientation between the two exhibits.

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Figure 8-6 Routes for mobile participatory performances

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Figure 8-7 Sites of non-mobile participatory performances

The following table (Table 8-2) identifies the participatory activities identified in my study briefly describing each; indicating whether they are cyclical, occasional , or unique; if cyclical or occasional then estimating the frequency; estimating the duration of each event; and estimating the number of participants in each event. The site column is keyed to the locations displayed in the exhibit sites of non-mobile participatory performances (Figure 8-11).

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Table 8-2 Summary of Participatory activities that are part of the community’s repertoire

Site Description Temporal Frequency of Duration per Estimate of Category Cyclical event typical Events number of participants

Thomas Angelius Cyclical 7 times / 5 minutes 75 Student Prayer week Union La Piazza Celebration Cyclical 1 time / year 4 hours 300 of Lights Queen Theology on Occasional 4 times / year 2 hours 100 Mary’s Pub Tap Queen Cigar Night Cyclical 12 times / 2 hours 25 Mary’s Pub year The Bean Community Unique meetings Donahue Daily Mass Cyclical 5 times / 30 minutes 225 Academy week Demetree Public Unique Lecture Hall lectures Adoration Devotional Unique Chapel meditations Frontcourt Fellowship Unique of Oratory proximate to Sunday Mass Quasi-Parish Office of Cyclical 5 times / 8 hours Unknown Offices priest for the week Quasi-Parish of Ave Maria Oratory Sunday Mass Cyclical 4 times / 1 hour 200 week Oratory Daily Mass Cyclical 16 times / 1 hour 100 week Oratory Celebration Cyclical 1 time / year 2 hours 800 of Lessons Oratory Devotional Unique meditations

Combining the participatory layer and the reification layer (Figure 8-12) shows the convergence of this data focusing on the town center. Co-presence data is represented in blue and routes in red. The buildings of the town center are overlaid for orientation.

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Figure 8-8 Route and co-presence participatory data showing focus of activity in the town center

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Figure 8-9 A composite summarizing the 'important places' surface with the repertoire data

A close-up composite of the town center overlaid by the repertoire layer (Figure 8-13) shows the area of the development covering the town center and the University Mall is the geographical focal point of the community’s repertoire. It forms a strong cultural core for the community that, through the embodiment of interpretive tradition, emphasizes the community’s internal homogeneity organized around its practice of conservative Catholicism.

8.3 - Morphogenetic Analysis at the Scale of Character Areas

Morphogenetics is employed in my study to understand the arrangement of functional units throughout the entire development through the development’s regionalization. Whitehand describes the regional nature of morphogenetics, “… the geographical structure of an urban landscape may be interpreted as a kind of mosaic of units of varying degrees of distinctiveness” (Whitehand 2009, 6).

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Ave Maria is a planned community. The general parameters of the design of the entire development are established at the time it was permitted in the undated planning document Ave Maria Town Plan (SRA Development Document) provided by Barron Collier Companies. While documents such as this do not eliminate the evolution of the general plan, land uses, or building fabrics, they do constrain such evolution. My study examines Ave Maria approximately five years after it was constructed. Since I conduct my study so early in the development’s life cycle, it is not necessary to make the block- by-block analysis of the development that would be customary for the study of an older area with an emergent pattern of development. This enables me to focus my analysis on the development’s character areas and how the configuration of those areas changed over the course of the transition from the community’s first morphological period to its second. Character areas are fairly stable contiguous regions of the development that share a general level of homogeneity in use, ownership, and form such that they respond similarly to both ongoing and novel circumstances. The first morphological period is from the onset of the initial development of the community through its first major perturbation. The second is from the first major perturbation through December 2010. The perturbation that divides these periods is the time during which the local impact of the national housing crisis became blatantly obvious to the community, the commercial interests, and the developers.

8.3.1 - The First Morphological Period

The first morphological period in Ave Maria (Figure 8-14) started in 2005 with the onset of construction of infrastructure, institutional, residential and commercial improvements. The Collier County Commission approved the development order for the project on June 14, 2005. Physical construction appeared to have started shortly thereafter. Two years later, in September of 2007, the first residents moved in, the first businesses opened, and the university moved from its temporary quarters in Naples to its new campus in the development. This morphological period extended into 2009. Following is a reference map and short summary of the character areas. In the description of the character areas, areas that are essentially unchanged between the first and second morphological periods are described in the present tense. Those areas that change significantly are described in the past tense during the first morphological period and present tense during the second morphological period.

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Figure 8-10 An overview of the entire development showing the configuration of character areas during the first morphological period

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La Piazza La Piazza (Figure 8-14, G-3) immediately adjoins Annunciation Circle and houses many of the development’s commercial uses. The buildings in La Piazza are mixed-use with residential uses occupying the upper stories, destination bound office and institutional uses occupying the mid-stories, and commercial uses occupying the ground floors. The character area does not include the Oratory. Ave Maria Development, LLC, a corporation jointly owned by Barron Collier Companies and Tom Monaghan, own most of the property in this character area. Businesses on the ground floors rent space while some of the residences in upper floors are privately owned. Ave Maria University Significant portions of Ave Maria University (Figure 8-14, F-3 to 4) are completed. A number of dormitories, the student center, the library, and the classroom building are open. The University Visitor Center, which is actually located in La Piazza, is open and conducting tours of the campus. In addition to the university’s campus, the university owns the Oratory and the Rhodora J. Donahue Academy, a private school with classes from kindergarten through high school. The Oratory and private school are also open and operating. Park of Commerce Infrastructure is in place for a commerce park (Figure 8-14, F-6). The commerce park has a partially completed gas station and convenience store. The owner of the station and store abandoned construction of it when money to complete the project ran out. The property is reported be in litigation. There is also a dialysis clinic in the commerce park that appears to be open. Transportation Spine The La Piazza and University character areas are connected to a minor arterial road along the south side of the development, Oil Well Road, and a rural paved road along the east side of the development, Camp Keais Road, by two urban style roads through the development. The main road through the development is Ave Maria Boulevard. This road runs from south, originating at Oil Well Road, to north terminating at the north boundary of the development. The character areas in the development generally connect to this road. There is one main side road, Pope John Paul II Boulevard, that links the backside of the La Piazza character area to Camp Keais Road. Annunciation Circle, which passes through La Piazza, originates and terminates

133 along Ave Maria Boulevard and serves as the primary linkage between Ave Maria Boulevard and Pope John Paul II Boulevard. These main roads and the smaller neighborhood roads total fifteen miles of improved roads in the development. South Park, Utility Plant, North Park The South Park character area (Figure 8-14,E-6), owned by the Ave Maria Master Association, includes recreational facilities such as a softball field, bocce ball courts, pickle ball courts, an amphitheater, walking and running trails, and picnic pavilions. The North Park character area (Figure 8-14, E and F-2), also owned by the Ave Maria Master Association, includes soccer fields, softball fields, basketball courts, a playground, and a water park. A tennis facility and community center are planned for future development. The Utility Plant character area (Figure 8-14, F-6), owned by Ave Maria Development, LLP, is part of the development’s potable water, wastewater treatment, and reclaimed water infrastructure. Del Webb – Ave Maria The Del Webb – Ave Maria character area (Figure 8-14, C to E – 7 to 9) was a residential neighborhood located along the west side of Ave Maria Boulevard at the southern end of the development. It was constructed largely along the perimeter of its own 18-hole private golf course. This neighborhood offered a combination of single-family and attached housing. Historically Del Webb communities were age restricted to owners who were 55 years old and older. However, this community, during the first morphogenetic period, was open to people of all ages. Bellera Walk During the first morphogenetic period, the Bellera Walk character area (Figure 8-14, G and H – 6 and 7) was a residential neighborhood located along the east side of Ave Maria Boulevard toward the south-end of the development. This was the only gated neighborhood in Ave Maria. It featured single-family homes arranged along a series of small lakes and promised the future development of a restaurant, pools, post office, and similar amenities in a small commercial area. MiddleBrooke The MiddleBrooke character area (Figure 8-14, G-6) is an affordable housing residential neighborhood. This townhouse neighborhood is of approximately triangular configuration. The Park of Commerce encloses two of the area’s three sides. A wetland encloses the third side. Students reside in most of the occupied units. Examination of the deeds indicates that the

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university purchased many of the units and conversations with staff at the University Welcome Center indicates the university uses them to provide rental housing to graduate students at an affordable rate. Hampton Village The Hampton Village character area (Figure 8-14, G and H - 4) is a residential neighborhood that incorporates many components of New Urban design. These components include: a front porch community; generally within walking distance of commercial and institutional centers; zero lot line construction with the front faces of buildings near the front of the lots; and off street parking much of which is accessed from alleys behind residences. Some elements of the community fall further from the New Urban tree. For example, New Urbanism emphasizes a mix of levels of affordability. Hampton Village is designed for wealthier homeowners. Hampton Village is separated from the town center to its north primarily by the parking area provided for the town center. Emerson Park The Emerson Park character area (Figure 8-14, H and I – 2 and 3) is a single-family residential neighborhood that is home to a significant number of families with children. A small park at the center of the neighborhood, proximity to the waterpark and North Park, and the neighborhood’s proximity to the private school spatially support the ‘family’ emphasis of this neighborhood.

8.3.2 - The Second Morphological Period

As discussed in Chapter 4, the morphogenetic method is attentive to the social and cultural influences on land use and forms. Economic collapses, with attendant sociological and cultural changes, that began in the latter half of the last decade continue to sweep through global and local markets. The implosion of the U.S. housing bubble is central to these changes. The year of 2008 is generally identified as the epicenter of the housing market implosion. In December 2008, Ruth Mantell of the Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch reports housing prices drop by an average of 2.2% in 20 major U.S. cities in October 2008 and that the Case Shiller’s 10-city index records a 19.1% drop over the previous 12 months (Mantell 2008). Ave Maria was planned, permitted, and constructed before the devastating effects of the implosion of the housing bubble swept the nation. Sales projections for the initial few years of settlement were for approximately 1,000 residential units per year (Board of County Commissioners of Collier County, Florida 2005). 135

The sale of new homes in the development (Table 8-3) is estimated based on the online examination of GIS maps provided by the Collier County Property Appraiser’s Office. Obtaining sales this way is difficult and it is not considered totally reliable. However, even lacking absolute precision, these sales estimates clearly make a point. The point is that the sales of houses in Ave Maria are falling well below the figures that drove the developers’ analysis of the financial feasibility of the project. At a time when the developers projected to have concluded 5,000 sales of new homes, the actual sale of new homes is approximately 328, or about 6.6% of projected sales.

Table 8-3 Estimated actual sales per year by neighborhoods in Ave Maria

Sales - New 2007 2008 2009 2010 Total

Hamptons 34 11 7 5 57 Emerson Park 49 21 10 1 81 La Piazza 31 1 5 7 44 Del Webb / BelleraWalk 28 34 19 23 104 Middlebrook 351 3 3 1 42

177 70 44 37 328

In addition to significantly weaker than expected sales, the few re-sales during this timeframe indicate houses in the development purchased in 2007 are losing value at a rate of approximately 18.5% per year. It is difficult to say when the developers and the homebuilder realized actual sales were going to fall drastically short of expected sales. However, in May 2009 the St. Petersburg Times carried an article on the shortfall in sales (Thorner 2009). A PBS documentary on religious communities in Florida, which contained extensive footage on Ave Maria, also discussed at length the impact of the downturn in housing sales on the community. During that documentary, Dr. Glenn Whitehouse, Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Florida Gulf Coast University, commented, “The thing with Ave Maria as a development [is it] has been part of the story of the real estate bust in Florida. This is one of the many dreams that was conceived during the gold rush years of Florida real estate. The future of the town may depend on distancing itself from a particular Roman Catholic identity but it may also depend on embracing it more and more” (Frazer. 2010, between 48:00 and 49:00). 136

According to the Thorner article (2009), the homebuilder appears to have embraced the first of Whitehouse’s approaches, that of distancing from a Roman Catholic cultural identity. Thorner reports that the homebuilder is refocusing its sales on the Del Webb community. The Del Webb brand is known as a collection of “lifestyle” communities that cater to the 55 and over demographic. The focus by the homebuilder on the Del Webb community is complimented by restructuring of the development. One aspect of the restructuring involves extinguishing the separate identities of Bellera Walk and Del Webb – Ave Maria and joining them into one neighborhood. This new neighborhood is rebranded Del Webb – Naples. This is accompanied by transitioning the Del Webb community from its previous position absent of age restrictions to an age restricted community (AveHerald.com 2010b). The second aspect of the restructuring includes the announcement of the construction of a 36,000 square foot amenity center (Quilty) that will include a grand ballroom, a fitness center and movement studio, an indoor pool and spa, a library and internet lounge, tennis courts, amphitheater, etc. (Ave Maria Development). The center is for the exclusive use of Del Webb residents (Quilty). A geographic result of these changes is, according to 55Places.com, to create “two distinct enclaves”. 55Places.com, who clearly state that they are unrelated to the homebuilder, holds that the division into two enclaves is along the lines of age, saying, “The all-ages, family oriented Pulte Homes communities surround the University and Town Center. On the southern half of the parcel Del Webb in Ave Maria is constructing a lavish 55+ age-restricted community” (55Places.com). This community is the recently restructured Del Webb – Naples community. The perturbation of the collapse of the housing market and the restructuring of the development, then, precipitate the transition from the first morphological period to the second. The changes that attend that transition are most spatially evident in the reconfiguration of the southern character areas, the areas closest to the main entrance and furthest from the town center. Figure 8-15 shows the restructuring of the Del Webb – Ave Maria and Bellera Walk neighborhoods into the new neighborhood, and character area, of Del Webb – Naples. In my representation I not only indicated simply the combining of these two neighborhoods, but I also added the area south and east of the prior Del Webb – Ave Maria that is shown as an area of future development in the first morphological period into the new character area to reflect the location of the new amenity center currently under construction in that area.

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Figure 8-11 An overview of the entire development showing the reconfiguration of character areas during the second morphogenetic period highlighting the incorporation of Bellera Walk into Del Web and the extension of Del Webb related development on the west side of Ave Maria Boulevard.

Morphogenetic analysis of the development highlights how the relationships between the functional units of the development change due to the perturbation caused by the collapse of the housing bubble. The implications of these changes are explored in Chapter 10.

8.4 - Space Syntax Analysis

Contiguous extents of open public land are shown to promote highly predictable patterns of movement. Segment line analysis is employed in my study to understand how the spatial configuration of the Ave Maria’s paved road network, and the movement it naturally encourages, contributes to the community’s focus on its domain of conservative Catholicism. A segment line analysis measuring the integration metric of the road network using the angular measurement identifies the areas of Ave Maria that enjoy the highest degree of “travel to” behavior. The higher “travel to” values are indicative of core social areas. 138

Movement is also highly correlated to visibility. An intervisibility analysis of the religious district is developed to explore the relationship between the location of sites of reification and participation and their visibility within the district to determine if they are in fact located in highly visible areas of the development.

8.4.1 - Segment Line Analysis

The segment line analysis (Figure 8-16) is coded to display the integration metric. The Index contains three representative values including High Integration, Moderate Integration, and Low Integration. The integration values are more finely reflected in the map as they are spread over a spectrum of eight colors.

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Figure 8-12 The results of the Segment Line analysis displaying the integration metric

This analysis clearly shows the higher degree of integration in the town center. This higher degree of integration indicates that the road network is configured to encourage “travel to” behavior to the town center and to generally discourage it to the residential neighborhoods. The town center is successfully configured to serve as the social core of the development. This is consistent with good design in that well-designed road networks encouraged travel,

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particularly by strangers, to commercial and institutional cores and discouraged it to residential areas. These social cores serve as the development’s generative space.

8.4.2 - Intervisibility Analysis

The intervisibility analysis for the study focuses on the cultural district identified in the GIS analysis above. The reason for this focus is intervisibility analysis is computationally intensive. The resource demands made on computational systems varies significantly depending on the grain of the analysis and the size of the area analyzed. The software used to conduct these analyses was incapable of processing an area significantly larger at a 10-foot resolution. This analysis uses a 10-foot resolution fishnet cast across the study area to determine observation points. 10-foot resolution provided a fine enough grain that it represents views between and around buildings in this analysis. A visual step depth analysis assesses the visual prominence of the Oratory, the most significant of the reifications. The Oratory is visible from nearly every point in the religious district. Figure 8-17 highlights this visual prominence. The areas the Oratory can be seen from, at eye level, are identified in gold. Areas in turquois indicate an observer in the area would have to make one move to an adjoining gold area to see the Oratory at eye level. Areas in navy indicated that an observer would have to make two moves to see the Oratory.

Figure 8-13 Visual Step Depth analysis - Oratory as Target

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The locations of other reifications share this visual prominence. For example, an analysis from the second most important reification, Adoration Chapel (Figure 8-18), shows that it is visible from most places in the religious district. A similar analysis from a reification that is mentioned much less often, the Memorial to the Unborn (Figure 8-19) shows a diminished, yet still substantial, visual prominence.

Figure 8-14 Visual Step Depth analysis - Adoration Chapel as Target

Figure 8-15 Visual Step Depth analysis - Memorial to the Unborn, at the southeast corner of the Student Union building, as Target

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Figure 8-16 Visual Step Depth analysis - Fountain outside 'The Bean' as Target

Comparisons are made between the visual prominence of these three reifications and the visual prominence of two other cultural traces that are not central to the domain interests of the community. The first comparison is made with a fountain outside the coffeehouse, ‘The Bean’, located near the upper right corner of Figure 8-20. The second comparison is with the front entrance of ‘Founder’s Field’ (Figure 8-21), a museum focusing on Tom Monaghan’s life and featuring memorabilia from it. These traces, which are not central to the community’s domain interests, enjoyed far less visual prominence.

Figure 8-17 Visual Step Depth analysis - 'Founder's Field' as Target

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Figure 8-18 Visual Integration analysis of the cultural core area of Ave Maria

The visual integration analysis (Figure 8-22) identifies the areas that naturally attracted traffic-to their locations. The red areas are highly integrated (and hence naturally attracted a lot of traffic), gold areas are moderately integrated, and blue areas are poorly integrated. The analysis indicates that the open area at the north side of the religious district is the most visually integrated area exerting the strongest natural draw on traffic. It is followed by the much larger area of moderate integration that stretches around the Oratory and westward along the mall to the student union. Overlaying the visual integration analysis are the reifications sites. This representation shows that most of the reifications are located in areas of moderate to high visibility.

8.5 - Conclusion

This chapter reports the results of studies of the spatial configuration of Ave Maria. It begins by reporting the results of the development of a GIS ontology. The ontology facilitates the study of the spatial configuration of data developed qualitatively in Objective 1 in a GIS. Sixteen reifications and sixteen participatory activities are categorized using it. Nearest Neighbor analysis conducted in the GIS shows a strong pattern of clustering in both the reifications (material cultural traces) and a set of non-residential ‘important places’ identified by respondents. Moran’s Index shows significant spatial autocorrelation between 144

important places with similar counts of reifications within walking distance. Natural Neighbor analysis is used to construct a surface indicative of the location and spatial extent of the area where Ave Maria’s repertoire and practice are focused. The data from the participatory activities is visually correlated with the results of the reification and ‘important places’ analysis. Fourteen of the sixteen reifications and all of the participatory activities cluster in the town center. Morphogenetic analysis of the development’s character areas during two morphogenetic periods is reported. The first shows the configuration of the character areas at the time the development opened. The second shows how the spatial configuration changes in response to a global perturbation, the collapse of the U.S. housing bubble and the economic collapse associated with it, which impacted the community. Space syntax analysis reports how the spatial configuration of the development’s road network promoted movement to the town center supporting the town center’s function as the social core of the community. Visibility analysis shows that the reifications are located at points of high intervisibility.

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CHAPTER NINE

DISCUSSION OF OBJECTIVES 1 AND 2

In this chapter, I synthesize the results of the research into two key findings. These findings emphasize the important roles that cultural features and their spatial configuration can play in the construction of a landscape that embodies the cultural identity of a community. They emphasize that communities both construct and are constructed by the landscapes within which they live their day-to-day lives. They identify some of the key roles cultural features play in the ongoing construction of domain-centered place-based communities. Two findings summarize the results of my research. The first is that Ave Maria embodies its interpretive tradition in its cultural features, its cultural traces and performances. Those cultural features compose a landscape that culturally orders and geographically borders the community. The cultural ordering is strong enough to result in a highly homogenous population around the cultural axis of conservative Catholicism. While it is a homogenous community, the interpretive tradition is open enough to multiple interpretations that members hold different views about the particulars of their faith while maintaining their membership in the community. They negotiate the meaning and importance of those particulars as new circumstances create the need. The second finding is that the spatial configuration of Ave Maria’s cultural traces and performances produce a compact district. The community’s cultural features are tightly clustered in a particular area of the development. That area of clustering is identified as a district because of the pronounced theme common to those cultural features. The theme embodies the community’s domain interest, conservative Catholicism. This district is identified as the most important area of the development to members of the community. The importance of it is further emphasized by its central location.

9.1 - Ave Maria – A Homogenous Community

My research argues that Ave Maria is a community organized around a central domain, conservative Catholicism. An interpretive tradition, embodied in the community’s cultural traces and performances, culturally orders the community around that domain. The domain focus of the community, co-constructed by its cultural traces and performances, results in a homogenous population.

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9.1.1 - Centrality of Conservative Catholicism – the Community’s Domain

As a place, Ave Maria facilitates the day-to-day practice of the Catholic faith. Nothing makes that clearer than the Oratory. The spatial centrality of the Oratory, its artistic appointments, and the performances conducted within it are particularly clear indications of the centrality of Catholicism in the life of the community. The Oratory is located at the social core of the development. Space syntax shows that the roads in the development are configured to naturally channel travel to the social core, the town center. The town center’s spatial configuration further accentuates the defining role of the Oratory. The commercial portion of the town center forms a parabola. The Oratory is located at the focal point of that parabola. This spatial configuration emphasizes the centrality of the Oratory, as well as the material traces it includes and the performances it hosts, to the community. This is captured by the Ave Maria Oratory Tour Guide:

Symbolizing the centrality of our Catholic faith, Ave Maria Oratory is located in the heart of this unique community…. The 108 foot Oratory can be seen for miles around, reflecting the medieval thought that churches should always be the most prominent buildings in a town, beckoning worshippers to service and guiding pilgrims on their journey.

The Annunciation is the focal point of the front façade of the Oratory. Ave Maria University’s web site describes this sculpture as an “emblematic work of art for the University and town.” The sculpture is a traditional Annunciation composition embracing several key markers of conservative Catholicism including a supernatural worldview, a traditional morality, and a high regard for traditional authority. The orientation of the Oratory is purposefully established to further emphasize the theme of this sculpture. On March 25, the day of the annual Feast of the Annunciation in Catholic tradition and hence of heightened importance to the residents of Ave Maria, the sun rises directly behind the church. The sculpture and the orientation of the church each emphasize the importance of the life of Jesus, from the moment of his conception forward, as well as the central role of his mother, Mary, to the community. The Oratory is still incomplete. Future plans call for the eventual construction of a 65- foot crucifix including a 40-foot corpus (Body of Christ) near the main entrance (Dillion 2008). The crucifix represents the centrality of the sacrificial death of Jesus to the community. A 10-foot cross is installed on the roof of the Oratory above the main entrance. “The 10 foot Celtic cross that crowns the Oratory is the highest point in the town, drawing all eyes

147 upward to the instrument of our salvation” (Ave Maria Oratory Tour Guide. 2010). That cross reifies the community’s belief in the centrality of the resurrection of Jesus. Performances in the Oratory further embody the Catholic interpretive tradition of the community. The most important of these performances are the sacraments. The Eucharist is celebrated several times a day. In the performance of the Eucharist, the elements of bread and wine were believed to be transubstantiated into the body and blood of Jesus. The Oratory is the central focus of the community. It obviously ties the community’s domain to the Roman Catholic Church. However, it would be a mistake to essentialize 1.2 billion people worldwide or 78 million Americans. There is a vast range of positionalities within Roman Catholicism, and those positions are important to adherents. As discussed briefly in Chapter 1, researchers have tended to arrange those positionalities along a socio-political-theological spectrum from liberal to orthodox. While such a scale probably obscures a good deal of the subtle diversity within the tradition, it is a scale that is actually employed by Roman Catholics in their own discourses. Residents of Ave Maria hold a conservative orientation to Roman Catholicism, an orientation subtly incorporated in many aspects of the Oratory.

9.1.2 - Cultural Ordering

The cultural ordering and geographic bordering of Ave Maria embody in its traces and performances the conservative range of Roman Catholicism. As discussed in Chapter 1, at least five markers distinguish conservative Catholics from more liberal and orthodox Catholics. Evidence for all five markers is presented in Chapter 7. Three of these markers are discussed at length below. 9.1.2.1 - A Supernatural View of the World Conservative Catholics hold that places where the consecrated host resides are sacred or holy. They find in the consecrated host the clearest reification of their faith, believing that it is literally the consecrated Body of Christ and the holy presence of God (The Roman Catholic Church Ongoing). One respondent reflected the view of many respondents when he stated that the two holy places in Ave Maria were, “the Oratory and the Chapel. The first because that is where Mass is celebrated, and the latter because of perpetual adoration. I frequent both sites often.” Another respondent explained that she felt it important to be respectful in any church but felt a far greater burden to be so in Catholic churches because of the presence of the consecrated Host.

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The association of the supernatural with churches extends beyond simply the celebration of the Eucharist and the presence of the consecrated host. One respondent put it this way:

The Catholic faith is a very bodily faith. We emphasize the body and in that we are similar to ancient Judaism from which we rose. It is a way that we are quite different from Protestants who are much more about the ideas concerning faith. The bodily emphasis of the Catholic Church can be traced back to the early martyrs of the faith who shared with Christ in his sufferings. What remains of their bodies, literally their relics, are incorporated into the alters of Catholic churches. Now days it is not always the relics of the earliest martyrs but there is still a relic in the alter of every Catholic Church. Eucharist, then, is celebrated over the relics of the martyrs. The place where Eucharist is celebrated, where these holy relics reside, are our churches. They are consecrated by and for these presences and that is what makes them holy.

The Oratory’s focus on Mary was another example of the community’s supernatural view of the world. The Annunciation bas relief sculpture reified the account of the Angel Gabriel, a messenger of God, announcing to Mary that she would miraculously conceive and give birth to Jesus. Another, much less obvious, reification in the front façade was an icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe. This representation of Mary is identified with an apparition near Mexico City in the 16th Century to a converted Aztec (hence the identification of the representation as Patroness of the Americas). In this representation Mary is portrayed as pregnant and hence this representation also emphasizes her role as Protectress of the Unborn. In addition to planned and carefully constructed cultural features embodying a supernatural view of the world in Ave Maria, there are unofficial cultural features. For example, the Klucik Memorial, described in Chapter 7, is a place constructed for members to pray for the accident’s victim as well as a place to reflect upon their own lives. Praying the Rosary, a devotion and as such not an official performance of the Church, is a common practice throughout Ave Maria. It is often facilitated through the use of a set of beads. These beads are prominently displayed for purchase by many of local merchants. Performances also embody the community’s supernatural view of the world. The performance most central to the community is the celebration of Mass. In the celebration of Mass, the priest facilitates the transubstantiation of wheat bread and grape wine into the body and blood of Jesus. By consuming the transubstantiated elements, the members participate in Jesus’ sacrifice. Through prayers members communicate with God. There are also religious performances that are not officially recognized by the Church. Prayers to Mary, which are considered devotional prayers, are an example. When asked why she

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prayed to Mary, one member explained that Mary intercedes with Jesus for believers. As another example, members ‘make visits to the Blessed Sacrament’ during which they participate in the perpetual adoration of the consecrated Host, the bodily presence of Jesus, through prayers and devotional reflections. Like official performances, unofficial performances are important to the members of the Ave Maria community. Twenty-nine of thirty-four respondents (86%) identify devotional mediation at Adoration Chapel as important to the practice of their faith. Twenty-three (67%) also indicate devotional meditation at the Oratory is important. The community’s embrace of a supernatural worldview is reflected in a variety of traces and performances. The Catholic Church officially recognizes some of them and not others. These traces and performances embody the perspective that what happens in the realm of the Heavens influences what happens in the day-to-day world of the community. It also suggests that the members of the community and their actions are known to and could be influential in the realm of the Heavens. 9.1.2.2 - Embrace of “traditional” morality, “family values,” and heavily emphasized opposition to abortion and birth control Ave Maria embraces a traditional morality focusing on what is frequently described as ‘family values.’ Pope John Paul II identifies those values in his apostolic exhortation, Familaris Consotio. The document affirms the importance of family life, promotes traditional morality, and describes the role of religion in daily life. The members of Ave Maria embody those views both in what they embraced and what they opposed. One of the primary motives respondents give for moving to Ave Maria is to provide a traditional environment for their children. A conservative Catholic education at the private school is often mentioned in that regard. Chapter 7 points out that Donahue Academy’s education relies upon the ‘great books’ tradition and focuses in such classic areas as logic and rhetoric. Religion is taught as a component of the program. Several of the teachers are traditionally garbed Catholic sisters. Students, faculty, and staff are required to participate regularly in daily Mass. All of these traces and performances are housed in a 30,000 square foot facility located just outside the town center. According to respondents who completed the mapping exercise, Donahue Academy and the only local grocery store are the two most important sites in Ave Maria outside of the town center (Figure 8-9).

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This emphasis on family values found a variety of other expressions. Several respondents mentioned they moved to Ave Maria so their children could live at home while attending the university. Others were pleased that their children were associating with children from families who shared their family’s values. Specific positive mentions were made of the role of university students in modeling an active involvement in the church, the capacity to set aside concerns that their children would be exposed to pornography or the illicit use of drugs, and the conviction that other adults in the community were trustworthy in their treatment of the children. Several large families that included five or more children were observed in the community. It was quite common to observe families with three or more children. Members of the community who were not members of these families appeared quite willing to assist with childcare when these larger families participated in community events. A number of respondents commented favorably on the size of these families and indicated that these large families were emblematic of conservative Catholicism. In Ave Maria, ‘pro-life’ and anti-birth control positions are equated with the community’s family values orientation. The degree of importance assigned to these positions is debated creating shades of grey in the community’s valuation of the positions. However, everyone in the Ave Maria community who discussed their view on these matters agreed that, when reduced to a black and white choice, they are pro-life and anti-birth control. The community’s pro-life views are well known in the region. In the media the community’s positions in these matters is typically reduced to black and white and widely publicized. Early in the design of the development, Monaghan attempted to restrict access to birth control, abortions, and pornography in Ave Maria (this is discussed further in Chapter 10). His efforts were opposed by the county ACLU and when he was later asked if a pharmacist who wanted to sell contraceptives would be allowed to locate in Ave Maria, Monaghan commented that he was of the opinion that there was nothing he could do to prevent it (Reilly 2005). During my fieldwork the developer’s representative, Blake Gable, was asked a similar question. He indicated that Barron Collier Companies hoped that the pharmacy would respect the views of the majority of those who live in Ave Maria and not offer contraceptives; however, the final decision would rest with the pharmacy. As part of my fieldwork, while shopping at the local grocery, I looked for a display of condoms and did not fine one. The community’s pro-life view was traced not only in what was absent from the community but also in what was present. For example, a table in the narthex of the Oratory was

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overflowing with anti-abortion materials. These were both polemic and devotional, often times containing elements of each. The statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe, known as the Protectorate of the Unborn, in the front façade of the Oratory is another example. A number of respondents also commented on their pro-life positions. Further, the media reported on members’ active protests against abortions at the Collier County Planned Parenthood facility. The Memorial to the Unborn located outside the university’s student union building is a vivid display of pro-life sentiment. The inscription on the memorial reads, “Dedicated to the sanctity of life and memory of all children who died unborn their names known only to God.” The memorial itself is a broken or unfinished column suggesting the remembrance of something incomplete (Figure 7-7). Attached to the column is a cross. In many Christian traditions, a cross is used to emphasize the resurrection while a crucifix is used to emphasized the sacrificial death of Jesus. The use of a cross on this memorial suggests the memorial focuses on the resurrection of the unborn who are viewed as innocent. The memorial’s ascription of names to the unborn suggests the community views the unborn as persons. 9.1.2.3 - Welcome the guidance of the Church in their daily lives Most of the respondents interviewed and the informal discussions held during the period of fieldwork indicated that members of the community welcome the guidance of the Church in their daily lives. Several times I observed people draw priests aside after Mass and talk with them. Others who were leaving would give these encounters a broad berth. An informant explained that people often sought advice about minor matters in their lives in these short encounters. One respondent, who frequently sought the counsel of the priests and theologians, said that he appreciated, “receiving guidance and direction from intelligent faithful people.” This appreciation for the guidance of the Church is also evidenced, for example, in the respect shown for the opinions of priests and theologians made as public comments. Theology on Tap is a semi-regular evening gathering at Queen Mary’s Pub. A theologian, priest, or sister makes a public presentation on a subject that is of interest to the community, which is followed by a public question and answer session and concludes with an open discussion among those who are present. The topic the evening I attended was the role of evangelism. The theologian discussed the traditional positions Catholics had adopted regarding evangelism and the community discussed the implications of those positions for the Ave Maria community. They frequently sought the

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theologian’s views and, when a member of a religious order would speak, the room would grow quiet to better hear what was said. Often the guidance of the church is offered in the context of Mass. This is important in Ave Maria since the Catholic Church teaches that Sunday Mass and Mass on certain feast days is obligatory. Masses are well attended. The priest’s homily is delivered in English, even during the Latin Masses. These homilies often contain suggestions and advice. In general, the people I interviewed take that guidance quite seriously. One respondent’s comments, reported in Chapter 5, are representative of the comments of many, “Adherence to a life directed by the laws and rules of the church never leaves me unhappy or uneasy.”

9.1.3 - Geographic Bordering

Many moved to Ave Maria in search of the cultural ordering of their lives that this place- based community offers. As Anderson (2010) points out, cultural ordering and geographic bordering are different sides of the same coin. When you have one, you have the other. People who live in Ave Maria do not wind up there by accident. Geographic bordering assures that those who move there have done so quite intentionally. Anderson identifies several ways a place can be geographically bordered. Some are quite literal, establishing a place’s territory. The legal description of the boundaries of Ave Maria is an example of the manner in which a material trace literally borders it, establishing its location. The inscription of those boundaries on the cadastral maps of Collier County is a second material trace bordering it as a place. A sign marking the entrance of the development is a third such trace. There are other, less obvious, forms of territorial bordering. For example, Ave Maria is constructed in a remote location. Many have suggested that it is isolated in the sense that Jonestown was isolated. It would be inappropriate to call a place that is a 30-minute drive from one of the wealthiest and fastest growing areas of America, Naples Florida, isolated. It is connected, at the least, by cable, telephone, electrical services, Internet, delivery companies, county services (sheriff and EMS for example) and paved roads to the wider world. What happens in the wider world continuously impacts the community. It is not isolated. But it is remote, and that remoteness serves as a geographic border. The nearest semi- urban area is the unincorporated town of Immokalee several miles north. The nearest urban area is Naples which is thirty miles west of Ave Maria. It is constructed in a former tomato field that itself appears to be an agricultural area established through the drainage of portions of the Everglades. A minor arterial roadway (currently being improved to a four-lane road) borders its 153

southern boundary and a rural connector roadway borders its eastern boundary. Land reserved as stewardship areas, wetlands, generally borders the development to the west and north, reducing the likelihood of future development adjoining Ave Maria. There are also less obvious definitions of who belonged in Ave Maria. The starting prices of single-family residences in the development border it from those who could not afford a significant mortgage. Its New Urban design borders it from those who sought the anonymity of less intimate neighborhood designs. Through the employment of these and many other material traces and performances, Ave Maria is geographically bordered. These borders define Ave Maria as both a unique place and as a place uniquely focused on the day-to-day practice of conservative Catholicism.

9.1.4 - How Cultural Ordering and Geographical Bordering Construct Homogeneity

Arguably, Ave Maria is a unified cultural region. The “glue” holding this cultural region together is a commitment to conservative Catholicism. It is a commitment shared by nearly all of the earliest residents. Ninety-one percent of those interviewed are Catholics. One resident summed up the centrality of that faith to Ave Maria’s cultural identity saying:

Is Ave Maria a religious town? I don't think you can avoid it. It is a Catholic town built around a Catholic university. The entire community becomes infused by Catholicism. It is not just a lot of Catholics living in the same place. It is a place of faith.

My research indicates that many moved to Ave Maria to pursue a way-of-life they could have only pursued less successfully elsewhere. The homogeneity of the Ave Maria community that flows from its organization around the common pursuit of a day-to-day conservative Catholic way-of-life is so attractive that many residents leave behind the security and comfort of established lives, often at substantial economic risk, to construct new lives in Ave Maria. Conservative Catholics who move to Ave Maria feel at home there. As reported in Chapter 7, one respondent described it as the “Catholic Mayberry”. Homogeneity along the axis of conservative Catholicism is not complete in Ave Maria. There are residents who do not share the hegemonic commitment to conservative Catholicism. The most obvious are the three (9%) respondents who are not members of the Catholic faith. I cannot reveal their reasons for moving to Ave Maria without identifying them. I choose to protect their anonymity by not reporting their reasons for moving to Ave Maria in detail, though

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health, family, and business reasons are among them. All three of those respondents indicate that they are comfortable in Ave Maria and have found the community highly tolerant of them. There is also a range of positions held within the broad definition of conservative Catholicism. Several respondents moved to Ave Maria expecting the community to adopt a more aggressive positionality regarding matters of abortion and birth control. Some report feeling their positions are less tolerated in the community. At least one respondent is considering relocating because Ave Maria is not conservative enough. Several also mentioned differences with regard to the charismatic expression of faith. Some want the performative envelope of Mass extended to include charismatic liturgy including ecstatic expressions from the congregants. Others are opposed to such extension. No one I spoke with indicated that their opinions in the matter are not tolerated, they simply are not adopted.

9.1.5 - Summary of Cultural Homogeneity

My study shows how a community, to promote cultural identity that parallels its domain interest, can use reifications and performances to culturally order and geographically border a place. Most communities employ some level of cultural ordering and geographic bordering. What separates my study from others is that it explores the use of these by communities of practice. Communities of practice are highly homogenous along the axis of their domain, that central enterprise the community practices day-to-day and that it regulates through a shared interpretive tradition. As Massey and others point out, most places in the developed world are becoming progressively heterogeneous. That heterogeneity results naturally from the processes of globalization. Research on Ave Maria’s homogeneity offers at least two benefits in this respect. First, it addresses the dilemma of how we can know the impacts of heterogeneity on developed culture if we lose our standards of homogeneity with which to compare it. Ave Maria certainly does not provide all of the data necessary from which to make such comparisons, but it does provide some of that data. It tells us, for example, that members of a homogenous community do not necessarily have to be intolerant of those who see things differently, even along the central axis of that homogeneity. It also reminds us that whatever standard we use for homogeneity, there will still be a variety of positionalities that fall within that standard. By extension, we might suspect that no matter how heterogeneous a culture, there are still homogenous trends within its various axes. While this is obvious, it still seems to me grossly overlooked in much of contemporary geography. 155

Second, Ave Maria raises an important question. What do people do if they find that they need more homogeneity along a central axis of their own identity than is offered by the culture at large? My research suggests that at least one answer is to form a homogenous place-based community along that axis. One of the major benefits mentioned by those who live in Ave Maria includes an often enhanced capacity to experiment along the lines of that axis. That does not mean the community will necessarily endorse your experimental position but it does mean that it will be taken seriously as a potential position within the culture. Another major benefit is that aspects of the interpretive tradition that would have been viewed as unorthodox, perhaps even as transgressive, other places may be normal or even natural in the place-based community. Cultural ordering and geographic bordering result in a highly homogenous community of practice in Ave Maria. The community constructs an array of reifications and performances that embody a conservative Catholic interpretive tradition. Individually, each reification and performance preserves a bit of the interpretive tradition, the meaning, Ave Maria embraces. Collectively, they culturally order and geographically border the development’s life. As one respondent puts it:

When you come to a Catholic town you expect a more structured world and I was comfortable with that. Surprisingly the Catholic view begins to permeate every aspect of life. When you look around town you see it everywhere … in the stores and offices, the eating places, the way people interact on the street, the things the kids have to say to one another. It becomes the air you breathe. I remember listening to the kids one evening have an animated discussion of which was the best saint and why. This place is like a Norman Rockwell painting, only it is a real place.

Finding 1: Ave Maria is a place within which the community’s interpretive traditions inform the day-to-day practice of its members. The place, like the community that constructs it, embraces a high degree of homogeneity.

9.2 - Ave Maria – A Community that Benefits from Strategic Spatial Configuration Including a Cultural District

Chapter 8 reports the spatial configuration of the repertoire and the community. In it I find that the repertoire is spatially clustered in an area that extends from the town center westward across Ave Maria Boulevard to approximately the student union building on the university campus. This is the area of the commercial and university land and building uses adjoining Annunciation Circle and across Ave Maria Boulevard along University Mall. The

156 clustering there includes reifications such as the Oratory and Adoration Chapel as well as performances such as Mass and portions of the Rosary Walk. Further, Chapter 8 shows the members of the community find this area important. A few mention the restaurants and businesses in the town center but most identify the cultural traces and performances as important. A statistical analysis of correlation between the locations of the cultural traces and performance and the ‘important places’ identified by respondents indicates the two are related. While correlation does not indicate causation, when this evidence is combined with evidence from the qualitative data, it is reasonable to say that this area is important to the members of Ave Maria because it is a culturally dense area.

9.2.1 - The Oratory

The Oratory anchors the area. As Chapter 7 points out, it is a singularly noticeable feature. Simply in terms of its size, it rises approximately 50 feet higher than the surrounding buildings. The 10-foot cross over the main entrance extends its height to 60 feet in that location. The Oratory is visible from throughout the development providing a point of orientation. Since the Oratory is located on the university’s property, it employs the architectural motif of the university rather than the motif of the town center that surrounds it on three sides. The motif of the university buildings is after the design style of Frank Lloyd Wright and faced in stone and metal. The rest of the town center is stylized as a contemporary Mediterranean village. It is faced in stucco, painted in various shades of pastels, and trimmed in white. Extreme setbacks, particularly at the front and along the sides, further enhance the contrast between the Oratory and the surrounding buildings. The surrounding buildings conform to New Urban design by immediately fronting along a sidewalk. The front of the Oratory is setback approximately 100 feet from a similar sidewalk around it. Finally, the Oratory is set aside from the other buildings surrounding it by the absence of on-street parking. On-street parking fronts all of the building in the town center. However, with the exception of several handicapped spaces, no parking fronts the Oratory. These characteristics single out the Oratory making it unique and memorable. As such, the Oratory is a landmark in the development. People who are new to the area know when they are in the town center by the Oratory. People familiar with the area refer to the location of events as ‘behind the Oratory’ or ‘in front of the Oratory.’ Seeing the Oratory, which includes its spatial as well as architectural and religious characteristics, is even a reason for tourists to visit the town.

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To those outside the community, this landmark clearly identifies the town’s central ‘theme.’ Just as the courthouse in the center of Monticello, Florida tells those visiting the town that Monticello is ‘Old Florida’ or Cinderella’s Castle tells them Disney World is an amusement park, the Oratory tells them that Ave Maria is a conservative Catholic town. This landmark defines the cultural identity of the town. To those inside the community, this landmark is the boldest expression of the common interest that draws them together, their shared conservative Catholic interpretive tradition and the desire to integrate that tradition into their day-to-day lives. However, unlike many who are there to visit, those who live in Ave Maria realize it is not the only expression of the interpretive tradition they share. Their repertoire is complex. It not only includes reifications but also performances. And no single reification or performance fully embodies it.

9.2.2 – The Cultural District

Chapter 8 provides strong evidence that a number of reifications and performances embodying the community’s interpretive tradition cluster in a cultural core that extends west from the Oratory, and the town center that surrounded it, to the university’s campus. The University Mall is an open space mall that extends from Ave Maria Boulevard west approximately 1,100 feet to a retention pond. The north boundary and south boundary are edged by university buildings. The mall is approximately the same width as the town center and it is aligned to the parcel the Oratory is located on creating a visual continuity between the town center and the campus. High densities of reifications are located in this area and performances are held there. The reifications range in size from a chapel to a small statue and associated landscaping. Both mobile and non-mobile performances occur there and in the buildings lining the mall. They include devotional performances such as the Rosary Walk and Angelus Prayer, educational performances such as religious lectures and fireside chats, vocational performances such as the carving of the bas relief sculpture The Annunciation, and entertainment and fellowship performances. Chapter 8 identifies this core as an area important to members of the community. Seventy-two of ninety-six nonresidential ‘important places’ identified by respondents in the mapping exercise are located in the core. A predictive surface indicates that most of the area in the core would have been found important to at least several respondents and some areas important to most respondents.

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The Step Depth Analysis in Chapter 8 shows the district enjoys a high degree of intervisibility. Members of the community are able to see many of the reifications when moving about the town center. For example, Adoration Chapel is clearly visible throughout the core. The Memorial to the Unborn, while not as clearly visible as Adoration Chapel, enjoys a high degree of visibility. The importance of that visibility is suggested when it is compared to the visibility of the museum and the coffee shop. Visual Integration Analysis indicates that the most visually integrated area is the north side of the core west of Ave Maria Boulevard. This area is The Annunciation sculpture site. The large open-air site provides seating so the curious can watch the artist construct the sculpture. Travel-to this area, natural movement encouraged by the area’s visual integration, carries one past a smaller reification, “St. Kevin in Prayer” and close to a larger one, “Noah’s Ark”. Both the Oratory and Adoration Chapel are also clearly visible from the sculpture site. As Segment Line Analysis in Chapter 8 demonstrates this strong core of the community’s cultural identity is well located. The development’s road system naturally encourages travel-to this area. When visitors enter the development the spatial configuration of the roads provides an intelligible pathway that leads them past the residential neighborhoods and to this area of the development. Most of the residents of the development also travel to this area for social, shopping, and practice purposes. The community’s entire repertoire is not located in this cultural core. Adjoining this area to the east is another area that a noticeable number of respondents identified as important. It extended from the east side of the town center north to the private school and east to the local grocery store. While this region does not contain the same density of cultural traces, it does contain one of the most significant traces, the private school. A war memorial featuring an angel holding the helmet of a fallen soldier and another annunciation piece identified locally as the Angel Gabriel Statue are on the university campus but outside of the core area. Still further removed is the one reification that is located off of the university’s property, the Klucik Memorial. This shows that, consistent with Lynch’s view of a thematic district, the strong cultural core in Ave Maria dissipates moving outward from its center towards its peripheries. (Lynch 1960: 70-71). There are several reasons for the presence of this cultural and social core. The first is that the planners provided for it from the outset. The development is envisioned as a place where

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residents can find everything from housing to leisure, employment, shopping, and social venues. It is designed to concentrate social and commercial venues in a town square motif. Second, Monaghan wants a social and cultural core, a town, to support his university. The university offers the other developer, Barron Collier Companies, a significant source of jobs to support the development at the outset and it offers potential residents a broad range of social opportunities that would otherwise be difficult to provide. Demand by residents for housing translates into commercial rents that offer a long-term income stream to the developers. Co- locating the university with the town center serves the interests of both developers. Third, pioneering residents are largely drawn by the conservative Catholic emphasis of the university. The social and cultural core of the town center and university serve both the initial and the on-going interests of these residents. It provides motivation to come to Ave Maria and reinforces over time the reasons for being there. When one doubts the reason for the risk and sacrifice required to move to Ave Maria, one has but to stroll through this cultural district to have one’s faith in the project renewed. The focus of the community is reflected in the focal point of the district.

9.2.3 - Summary of Spatial Configuration

The spatial configuration of the place, Ave Maria, serves to emphasize the community’s repertoire and, by extension, its domain. The community’s cultural focus is clear to both the members of the community and those who visit. The community is regularly reminded of its interpretive tradition and its reason for coming together. When an individual member’s focus drifts, it is quickly drawn back to the community’s central theme through a trip into town, a step out the front door of a shop, or a brisk walk around University Mall. It is important to remember that almost everyone moved to Ave Maria precisely because of the cultural identity the district supports. They find the density and configuration of cultural traces and performances desirable. In Ave Maria’s “economy of meaning,” the cultural district is the main vault for the established interpretive values that form the core of its repertoire. Finding 2: The spatial configuration of Ave Maria’s cultural traces and performances produce a district that is the cultural core of the community.

9.3 - Conclusion

My research identifies two significant findings relevant beyond Ave Maria. The first is that domain-centered places can be constructed to support the day-to-day practice of community

160 members. These places, like the communities that constructed them, embrace a high degree of homogeneity along the cultural axis of their domain. The second is that the interpretive value of the traces and performances that embody these communities’ interpretive traditions can be enhanced by strategic spatial configuration. A strategically located cultural district is an excellent example of this strategic spatial configuration with potentially normative implications. Chapter 10 explores how these findings inform three important aspects of the convergence of cultural identity and cultural landscape in Ave Maria.

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CHAPTER TEN

APPLICATION – THREE EXAMPLES

This chapter develops three examples of how my research is used to interpret and understand key events in the brief history of Ave Maria. The first example examines how the spatial configuration of Ave Maria addresses issues associated with the separation of church and state. The second examines how both the spatial configuration of Ave Maria and the homogenous cultural identity address changes made in response to the implosion of the housing market. The third explores how the terms of the community’s homogenous cultural identity are negotiated in response to the proposed development of an industry some members find culturally objectionable. Concepts in my work demonstrate important dimensions of each of these examples.

10.1 - Ave Maria and the Separation of Church and State

The First Amendment provides for, among other things, the separation of church and state; which prevents the establishment of a particular faith by a government entity. A recent incident illustrates the complexity of the issue. Joseph Waldman was a resident of Kiryas Joel, an Hasidic Jewish community in New York. According to Waldman:

(Kiryas Joel) is not a secular village, it is controlled completely by the Rabbi. … They advertise in all the Jewish newspapers with a warning saying clearly, ‘Nobody can come to live in this village without the prior approval of the religious organization, the Rabbi appointed people, to screen [them].’ (Klaus. 1994: between 16:00 and 17:00)

Controversy has swirled around the community for years, ranging from Kiryas Joel’s request for a publicly funded school for its disabled children; to public funding for the renovation of a medical center that does not exist; to a heavy reliance on food stamps, Medicaid and federal housing vouchers. Currently there is a pending lawsuit to disband the village because it constitutes an oppressive theocracy (Fitzgerald 2011).

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In Ave Maria, separation and establishment issues have also been raised. Tom Monaghan, the community’s founder and one of the town’s developers, claimed that pharmacies that sell contraceptives and media providers that offer pornography would not be allowed in the town. Collier County ACLU immediately threatened suit and Monaghan backed away from the claim (Reilly 2005, ABC News 2007, Frazer. 2010) maintaining that they would be prohibited on the university grounds (which are private) but that he could not control these matters in public areas.

Figure 10-1 Configuration of character areas (CA) in the town center of Ave Maria. This map identifies portions of the University Character Area and the Town Centre Character Area. These areas were defined by analysis of the Ground Plan, the Building Fabric, and the Land Use Plan. The strategic configuration of the University Character Area allowed for the display of Catholic iconography and the performance of Catholic ritual.

Recent interpretations of the First Amendment religion clauses have resulted in a national concern about what religious dimensions of life can be integrated into public space. In 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court heard Lemon v Kurtzman, a case that involves state support of private schools for teachers’ salaries, textbooks, and materials when the subject matter is secular. This

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case led to the establishment of the “Lemon Test” that requires: 1) government action have a secular purpose; 2) laws not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion; and 3) laws not result in ‘excessive government entanglement’ with religion (Wikipedia 2011). This controversial ruling is the foundation for a number of other rulings. In 1984, in Lynch v. Donnelly, the court upheld the public display of a crèche because it did not consider the display a direct benefit to religion. In 1989, in Allegheny County v Greater Pittsburg ACLU, the court ruled against a publicly displayed crèche largely because it bore the words “Gloria in Excelsis Deo”. In 2005, it heard two cases regarding the display of the Ten Commandments. In Van Orden v Perry it ruled the display of a monument at the Texas state capital was legal, holding that when considered in context it conveyed an historic and social meaning and hence served a “secular purpose”. In McCreary County v ACLU of Kentucky the court ruled the wall mounted display of the Ten Commandments in county courthouses was illegal because they were not part of a larger secular display. Most who have moved to Ave Maria desire the active integration of their faith and their public life. Mass is at least as much a part of their daily lives as getting their hair styled, meeting friends for a cup of coffee, or paying their utility bill. In ways reminiscent of Medieval towns, Ave Maria’s spatial configuration conjoins the community’s daily life and its life of faith. In no small part due to creative use of geography, it does so without crossing the fine lines established by the religion clauses of the First Amendment. Ave Maria addresses the separation issue by a clever use of spatial configuration (Figure 10-1). The morphogenetic analysis in Chapter 8 shows how the town center is spatially configured around its own center, a sizable parcel of land that is the focal point of the town’s design (Figure 10-1). By transferring ownership of this central parcel to the conservative Catholic university for construction of a1,100-seat church, the developers spatially sidestep First Amendment concerns. What is built on the parcel is built on land owned by the university, not the public. What happens on the property, happens on private property. This spatial configuration is important for at least three reasons. First, it locates conservative Catholicism at the heart of the public area of the development without violating the religion clauses of the First Amendment. The front window of every property in La Piazza, both those on the ground floor and those on upper floors, looks out on this central religious ground. This central religious ground is occupied by a 1,100 seat Catholic Church, the Oratory. Future plans for the area include significant, highly iconic,

164 extensions, including the construction of a 65-foot red-tinted glass crucifix with a 40-foot corpus (Dillion 2008). At the time of my fieldwork, shortly before Christmas 2010, a life-size crèche occupied a prominent position in the town center (Figure 10-2). Given recent Supreme Court decisions, it seems doubtful the crèche would have been lawful on public land (for examples, Allegheny County v Greater Pittsburg ACLU and McCreary County v ACLU of Kentucky). But the crèche in Ave Maria was not located on public land. It was located on land privately owned by the university. The faith at the center of La Piazza is recursively reflected in the shops that surround that center. Many shops carry Catholic products such as art, nick-knacks and books, and sacred items such as Rosaries. Catholic themes also play a significant role in the decoration of shops in La Piazza. For example, during my fieldwork, shops in Ave Maria as well as the Field of Dreams Museum, featured the display of crèches from around the world recursively incorporating the theme of the life-size crèche located in front of the Oratory. Second, the spatial configuration of La Piazza and the university’s property strategically prevent the establishment of structures embodying any other religious traditions at the center of the development. Commercial interests enclose three sides of the central parcel the church owns (Figure 10-1). The main thoroughfare, Ave Maria Boulevard, divides the fourth side of the church parcel, the front side, from the property to the west. The property west of Ave Maria Boulevard is owned by the university who developed it with their main campus. One of the developers, Barron Collier Companies, and the homebuilder, Pulte Homes, went to lengths to emphasize that the community is open to people of all faiths. It is, however, difficult to see how the spatial configuration of the community provides room for other religious traditions, at least at the heart of the community. Through the use of this configuration, there is no remaining land at, or near, the center of town that can be used for development of an alternative religious viewpoint.

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Figure 10-2 A crèche located in the town center of Ave Maria

Third, it is alleged that the spatial configuration of La Piazza and the university’s property are used to exercise censorship of critical opinion. Marielena Montesino de Stuart, a resident and Catholic journalist who lives in Ave Maria, frequently writes from a subaltern position to the hegemonic positions in the community. For example, according to her reports, she was prevented from attending the dedication of the Tom Golisano Field House on the Ave Maria University campus because of her views (Montesino de Stuart 2009).

10.2 - The Housing Bubble Implosion

Either tacitly or explicitly, most communities of practice have territorial boundaries. These boundaries define, among other things, who are members of the community and who are 166

not. For example, in an art district operating as a community of practice, those whose studios are located in the district tend to be viewed as part of the community. The same can be said of nurses who work at a particular hospital, members of a street gang that occupy a particular region of a city, or university students who are part of a particular residential fraternity. The cultural and legal boundaries of the Ave Maria community initially extended to the boundaries of the development. Through a combination of forces, the cultural boundaries were re-negotiated, and with them the meaning of being a member of the Ave Maria community. The financial concerns of the homebuilder resulted in a restructuring of the southernmost neighborhoods. As discussed in Chapter 8, the restructuring included a reconfiguration of the neighborhood boundaries; the rebranding of the area; age-restriction of the new neighborhood; the construction of an amenity center for exclusive use by residents of the new neighborhood; the homebuilder’s expressed focus on marketing to people who qualify to live in the new neighborhood; and the homebuilder’s promotion of the new neighborhood as a “lifestyle community”. In the “Morphogenetic Analysis at the Scale of Character Areas” found in Chapter 8, two morphological periods are identified. The first is from the onset of construction (and, perhaps more realistically, planning) to the point at which it becomes obvious the national and statewide implosion of the housing bubble are having significant impact on the community. Arguably, this first period ends near the end of 2008 though it may have extended through part of 2009. During 2009, sales numbers in Ave Maria became a topic of discussion in the media (Thorner 2009, Frazer. 2010). When I made a preliminary visit to Ave Maria in January 2010 it was also a topic of discussion in Ave Maria University’s Visitor Center. Lower than expected sales numbers were, according to the staff, the result of people who wanted to relocate to Ave Maria being unable to do so because their homes elsewhere were not selling and they did not want, or could not afford, two mortgages. However, at the time, the staff expressed confidence that sales would soon turn around. In response to the unavoidable impact the protracted implosion had on Ave Maria, the Del Webb – Ave Maria and Bellera Walk communities were restructured. The two communities were combined into one age-restricted community branded Del Webb – Naples (Quilty). In addition, the homebuilder announced the construction of a 36,000 square foot amenity center to serve exclusively the residents of the restructured neighborhood.

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Based on the segment line analysis developed in Chapter 8, I believe the homebuilder wisely chose the location of the new amenity center. The analysis indicated that the spatial configuration of the road network created a natural flow of traffic to the town center establishing the town center as the social core of the community. Locating the new amenity center in the south end of the development established a new social core to support the development of a new cultural group, with a new identity, in the development other than the one anchored in the town center. Morphogenetic analysis indicates that the arrangement of the development’s character areas supports the division of the development into two enclaves. The location of green infrastructure, the utility plant, and wetlands north of the Del Webb neighborhood on the west side of Ave Maria Boulevard separate it from the university property. The location of the commerce park, affordable housing neighborhood, and wetland separate the Del Webb neighborhood on the east side from the Hampton Village neighborhood. 55Places.com, a web site focused on communities for people who are 55 years old and older, indicates that the changes have created two distinct enclaves in the development. “The all- ages, family oriented Pulte Homes communities surround the University and Town Center. On the southern half of the parcel Del Webb in Ave Maria is constructing a lavish 55+ age-restricted community” (55Places.com). Five of my respondents were from the Del Webb - Naples neighborhood. Four lived in the former Del Webb – Ave Maria neighborhood and one lived in the former Bellera Walk. All five appear to have purchased their residences prior to the merger of the neighborhoods. Each of them indicated they are members of the Ave Maria community. They travel to the town center on a regular basis to participate in the religious dimensions of the community’s life as well as to conduct other business. The restructuring does not appear to influence their perceptions of the Ave Maria community and at least two indicated that they are looking forward to the new amenity center. Several of my other respondents from outside of the Ave Maria – Naples neighborhood, however, indicated that they feel the religious character of the enclaves is different in noticeable ways. One respondent observed, “While there is a high percentage of those who are conservative Catholic and who think of the town as such in the neighborhoods outside of Del Webb, the Del Webb community is a retirement golf community and most of the people who live there don't think of Ave Maria as a religious town.” Another respondent indicated that they did not think of

168 the Del Webb community as part of Ave Maria saying, “We think of them as good neighbors in much the same way we think of the folks from Immokalee as good neighbors. They aren’t a part of Ave Maria. But they are good neighbors.” Other comments made in my presence, though not as part of a formal interview, emphasize that Del Webb - Naples is being marketed as a “lifestyle” community. Those speaking indicated that they did not think the ‘lifestyle’ emphasis characterized Ave Maria. A review of the Del Webb web site and promotional material support the view that Del Webb markets its communities, including Del Webb – Naples, as a “lifestyle”. In response to the changes made by the developer and homebuilder, there is preliminary data suggesting that the Ave Maria community is beginning to redefine itself. Previously the community defined itself as a formal cultural region. Its boundaries corresponded to the legal boundaries of the development. However, with the changes precipitated by the implosion of the housing bubble, the community appears to be transitioning to a definition of itself as a nodal cultural region. Nodal regions have a concentration of a particular cultural aspect in their node that diminishes as one moves from the node outward toward the cultural region’s periphery. The node of its definition appears to be the town center, particularly the cultural district, and the university character area. Areas heavily influenced by this cultural node include Emerson Park, Hampton Village, and MiddleBrooke. The area less heavily influenced in Del Webb – Naples. The community also exerts minor influence through contacts with Immokalee. This raises an interesting question, what type of cultural region will the Ave Maria community be going forward? The type of cultural region it eventually becomes has implications for both the cultural identity and the social organization of the community. For example, the Ave Maria community may become a vernacular cultural region defined primarily by its domain interest with relatively hard boundaries at the south end of the university and Hampton Village character areas. Or, it may once again become a formal community defined primarily by the development boundaries. This is particularly likely if the homebuilder’s efforts to redefine the south end of the development are unsuccessful. Or, it may continue to develop as a nodal community. I believe there are growing distinctions between Del Webb – Naples and the Ave Maria community. Those distinctions are potentially useful to the homebuilder who would like to focus on marketing the community as a “lifestyle” while shedding the perception of it as a conservative Catholic enclave. However, some social sinews will likely continue to draw the communities

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close to one another. For example, the location of the Publix grocery store, local dining opportunities, activities at the university, the utilities department office, and the church itself are all likely to draw many of the residents of Del Webb – Naples into the town center. It is too early to know the long-term impacts of this restructuring. This suggests the benefits of future research revisiting the community to analyze the actual influence the restructuring exerts on the community and the development.

10.3 - Jackson Lab Controversy

Communities and places wrestle with who and what does and does not belong. In doing so, there is an ongoing negotiation of the meaning of being a member of the community and a stakeholder in the place. During my fieldwork, members of the Ave Maria community and the stakeholders in the development held such negotiations around the proposed campus of a research lab that wanted to site facilities in the development. Barron Collier Companies is quite open about its efforts to recruit new employers to Ave Maria. In the pursuit of that goal, it developed a promising relationship with Jackson Laboratory, more commonly known as Jackson Lab. The proposal would have established the lab’s second research center outside of Bar Harbor, Maine, its home. The proposed center would have employed 244 over 10 years and would have fostered the development of related bio-medical research, including research facilities by several Florida universities, whose combined employment in Ave Maria would have approach 9,000 jobs over a 20-year build out (Freeman 2011). To recruit the lab, Barron Collier Companies was prepared to donate a tract of land (Nemecek 2010). A 50-plus acre area of the development was identified on the southwest side of the development that had direct access to Oil Well Road. Funding proposals were developed and presented to Collier County and the State of Florida. Jackson Lab describes itself on its web site: “We are an independent, nonprofit organization focusing on mammalian genetics research to advance human health. Our mission is to discover the genetic basis for preventing, treating and curing human disease, and to enable research for the global biomedical community” (Jackson Laboratory).

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Figure 10-3 The town meeting flyer posted around Ave Maria

While Jackson Lab had obvious appeal to at least one of the developers, it became a contested matter in the Ave Maria community. Some members of the Ave Maria community were concerned that the lab would engage in research that was contrary to their pro-life position. They turned to papal encyclicals such as Humanae Vitae: on the regulation of birth(Paul VI 1968), an extremely ‘pro-life’ document written by Paul VI condemning abortion and birth control. The position of those who appealed to this encyclical was reified in the community’s pro-life memorial, bumper stickers, and pro-life literature in the narthex of the church. Performances such as monthly protests at Planned Parenthood also embodied this interpretive tradition. The concern of this group was that the lab’s siting within the boundaries of the development would suggest the tacit endorsement of the Lab’s work by the community. Further, they were concerned that the association of the Lab with the development would besmear the symbolism of the phrase “Ave Maria”. Other members were willing to consider the siting of the lab. Among other things, they felt it would provide an opportunity for the community’s theologians to interact with leading scientists. This, too, was part of their interpretive tradition. Appeal was made to the Thomistic tradition of scholarship that emphasized the relationship between faith and reason. According to the university’s Graduate Programs in Theology: Academic Catalog, the university’s program “interacts also with contemporary human sciences such as psychology and sociology, as well as

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areas affecting the just ordering of society, including marriage and family law, political theory, and economic theory” (Ave Maria University Undated: 7). The university undergraduate science program offers majors in biochemistry, biology, mathematics, physics, and psychology. Arguably the university is itself a reification of the Catholic duality of faith and reason. While communities of practice are highly homogenous around their domain focus, they are never completely homogenous. Within the bounds of a general homogeneity, members hold different views about the particulars, and their viewpoints form an economy of meaning. The community constantly negotiates between the established meanings embodied in its repertoire and new viewpoints advocated by its members. The ‘present moment’ forms an interface between the cultural past, represented by the interpretive traditions that have been embodied in repertoires, and the future, represented by a never-ending array of novel circumstances the community must successfully resolve. This interface between their interpretive tradition and the present moment is their practice. The negotiations of meaning, in most instances, reproduce existing interpretations of the community. However, some instances are more demanding. They require the community to modify or discard portions of the interpretive tradition. The community meets these more demanding instances either through a program of structured research or out of necessity. The resolutions can dramatically alter the material construction of a cultural landscape. It can also alter the interpretation of existing features resulting in changes in the community’s repertoire going forward. In the events surrounding the potential location of Jackson Lab, the Ave Maria community wrestled with whether the community would embrace or oppose the lab’s location. During my stay in Ave Maria matters culminated locally in a town hall meeting held at The Bean, Ave Maria’s coffee shop. There were approximately 100 in attendance and seating spilled over into Queen Mary’s Pub located next door to The Bean. An interior hallway that allowed the spill over crowd to hear the debate connected the two establishments. I suspect there would have been considerably more in attendance had the university been in session at the time. A wide range of stakeholders attended. Some represented their businesses, some themselves as residents, some both. There was representation from religious orders, the Lab, and Barron Collier Companies. The two stakeholders lacking ‘official’ voices were the university and Tom Monaghan. There were also those who seemed to still be forming an opinion.

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The meeting, hosted by several residents, was billed as an information session. Initially it served as a forum for supporters to share their views with the community. Contrarian views were expressed during the question and answer session at the end of the meeting. The first to speak was Dr. Michael Waldenstein, a renowned Catholic theologian, a professor at Ave Maria University, and a full member of the Ave Maria community. He spoke regarding the ethics involved in the lab’s location inside the Ave Maria development. His speech was generally supportive of the location of the lab primarily because it would promote dialog between the scientists at the lab and the theologians at the university that would fuel the ongoing evolution of both the Catholic and local interpretive traditions. He drew heavily on Catholic repertoire to support his position. Mike Hyde, a representative of the lab, spoke next. He discussed the lab’s views on locating in Collier County, Florida. He emphasized the lab’s commitment to medical genetic research. He was an outsider to the Ave Maria community and spoke in favor of the project primarily from medical and humanitarian perspectives. Blake Gable, a representative of Barron Collier Companies, discussed the developer’s views of the importance of the project to the future of the development. Mr. Gable appeared to have a peripheral membership in the Ave Maria community. He was known to many of the stakeholders who were present and had spoken frequently with them about the interests and concerns of the developer. After opening remarks and the introduction of the invited speakers, Dr. John Jaroma, a math and physics professor at Ave Maria University and a member of the community, commented that all of the speakers were in favor of the project and asked to be added to the panel as a dissenting voice. The organizers of the event denied his request and the audience was asked to hold their thoughts for a question and answer session after the invited presentations. The question and answer session was heated at times and reflected the widely varying opinions of the stakeholders in attendance. Many appealed to the Catholic repertoire in the course of the discussions, particularly as it bore on the sanctity of the unborn. While much of the discussion included comments that connected the Ave Maria community and the development’s geography, perhaps none were so crisp as that made by Jaroma and reported in the Naples News.

“Ave Maria means something,” Jaroma said, adding that worries over research that will be conducted near a place carrying “the name of the blessed mother,” is difficult for some [in the community] to comprehend.” (Clark 2010)

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The controversy regarding the lab was resolved several weeks after I returned to FSU. Jackson Lab withdrew its applications to develop the lab. Subsequently it tried, unsuccessfully, to relocate the project to Sarasota, Florida. It finally located the lab in Connecticut. In most cases, the repertoire provides the resources the community needs to resolve its current circumstances and successfully practice its discipline. On occasion, however, the circumstances require the community to consider significant modifications to its repertoire to successfully resolve a challenge to its cultural identity.

10.4 - Summary

In these three cases the present forms an interface between the community’s past and its future. The ‘present moment’ is a matrix within which the community makes a myriad of practice decisions, most of which are not noteworthy and serve primarily to reproduce the interpretive tradition found in the community’s repertoire. Occasionally however the circumstances of the present moment call for a thoughtful re-evaluation of that interpretive tradition. How do you have a religious community in the U.S. that does not violate the religion clauses of the First Amendment? What is the nature of your cultural region and where, and why, do you draw its boundaries? What happens when a business wants to locate in the community whose actions may be considered contrary to the community’s interpretive tradition? The community’s wrestling with these circumstances has highlighted how geography and practice are integrated components in some communities. To maintain an acceptable level of homogeneity, communities of practice that are embodied in particular geographies have to negotiate between their interpretive traditions and the challenges of present circumstances. While my study has looked at this negotiation specifically in the context of a religious community, the need for such negotiation would be equally incumbent upon communities as diverse as art districts, residential university sororities and fraternities, street gangs, or any number of other place-based communities of practice.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

CONCLUSION

11.1 - Findings

11.1.1 - Homogeneity around at least one cultural axis is an important resource for the construction of cultural identity in domain-centered place-based communities Communities form and places are constructed for many reasons. My research studied a domain-centered place-based community. This type differs from other places which are constructed by factors other than a central purpose such as proximity to particular amenities, say a golf course or a school. Empirical evidence for the importance of a central purpose in these communities can be found from the differences between the Del Webb enclave which focus on lifestyle amenities and the Ave Maria enclave with its conservative Catholic domain focus. Communities like Ave Maria also differ from other communities in that they have a central organizing purpose but are not necessarily place-based. A legal community, in contrast, may be domain-centered however its members may be distributed across a town, state, or nation and have no place that they call as their own. Ave Maria’s shared purpose, or domain, is the desire by its members to live day-to-day in an openly conservative Catholic way-of-life. The development of Ave Maria is a place constructed to facilitate that purpose. The cultural ordering and geographic bordering that result from that construction have led to a highly homogenous population around the axis of religious practice. The homogeneity is not random. Many respondents report that they want to live in a culturally homogenous community on a conservative Catholic faith. They refer to it as, for example, their “Catholic Mayberry5 ”. They explore their faith in the public places of Ave Maria in ways they have not been able to elsewhere. They report knowing and understanding their neighbors in ways they have not understood or known them elsewhere. Their homogeneity constructs a place they enjoy and facilitates a way-of-life they desire. Postmodernism demonstrates that homogenous places are rare, particularly in more developed regions of the world. The dynamics of globalization in these regions push towards ever-greater levels of heterogeneity. However, that does not mean that some communities do not

5 This is a reference to a fictional town in North Carolina that served as the setting for two television sitcoms, The Andy Griffith Show and Mayberry R.F.D. that ran from 1960 to 1971 presenting an idyllic view of life. 175

desire homogenous places. Arguably, domain-centered place-based communities have, and will always, benefit from homogeneity around at least the axes of their central domains. As heterogeneity in communities rises with increased globalization, others who desire a greater level of homogeneity are apt to follow Ave Maria’s lead and establish places of their own. Homogeneity in Ave Maria is promoted geographically by the cultural orderings and geographical bordering the community’s repertoire and practice provide. Their homogeneity centers around their domain focus on a day-to-day conservative Catholic way-of life. The landscape of Ave Maria’s social core contains a dense cluster of reifications and serves as the site of an extensive number of performances that promote the community’s domain focus and contribute to its homogeneity. This area serves as a cultural district that constantly reminds residents of the community, of who they are, and why they choose to live together. In this sense, the homogeneity promoted by the community’s geography strengthens them individually and collectively in matters related to their shared focus. Several of the benefits reported by members of the community for this homogeneity include an enhanced sense of security, the sense of a shared set of community values that make sense to the residents, isolation from the distractions of a more heterogeneous cultures outside of Ave Maria, confidence that the community is promoting the values individual families want their children to adopt, and the capacity to experiment with new ways of living out their commitment to conservative Catholicism in a supportive environment. I suspect that most place-based communities of practice would ascribe similar value to homogeneity. However, it is important to remember that Ave Maria’s homogeneity, even along the axis of its central domain, is not monolithic. Residents of Ave Maria differed around such matters as their interpretation of the value and importance of a pro-life position, the role of charismata in worship, and the relationship they should share with other Catholics and with Protestants. This clearly shows that the cultural ordering of Ave Maria is not a settled matter. Consistent with communities of practice theory Ave Maria has an economy of meaning. Different views compete for position within this economy. A change of circumstance can result in one view becoming more highly or less highly valued. Homogeneity in Ave Maria sets a general baseline of knowledge and practice but within that baseline there is substantial room to see things differently. Within broader society this finding of a highly homogeneous population in a brand new place raises at least one interesting ethical question. What if we do not care for the ideology, or

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the extreme to which it is taken, that fuels one of these communities? Based upon the news reports I reviewed, the notion of a conservative Catholic community gave the press the jitters. What if this had been a neo-Nazi community that, instead of flying the Vatican flag next to the American flag, raised the swastika each morning next to the American flag? Or what if it had been a gay and lesbian community? Or a Muslim community? None of these seem unthinkable to me. The homogeneity of the Ave Maria community is strange to most people, though I only know of several who have found it at all threatening. What happens, though, if the domain that centers the community is threatening to us? While answering this question is certainly not within the scope of my study, I believe the results of the study raise the question. Can the ideologies we like, or at least those that do not threaten us, have their homogenous places and those we dislike, or distrust, be denied? This finding of the important role of homogeneity is also of particular importance to the discipline of Geography. Ave Maria represents an unusual and understudied type of community. As a discipline, we are used to thinking of homogenous places as isolated to a few remaining traditional cultures and to cultures of ‘the past.’ Here we find in a place of contemporary construction a highly homogenous place. At the very least, this raises for us the question, how strong is the desire for homogeneity and how many places are actually designed to meet that desire? I think institutions of higher education serve as an interesting example illustrating the importance of the question. Colleges and universities are often accused of retreating to ‘ivory towers’ isolating, or at least insulating, themselves from the larger society. They are seen as having a shared domain interest, higher academic education. They are organized as a constellation of communities of practice, departments, around particular expressions of their shared domain. Place-based universities are still probably the most common expression of higher education. Are colleges and universities really so different from Ave Maria? How strong is the drive for homogeneity in academia around the domain of ‘higher education’? Can we see ourselves fulfilling other major roles in society? Ave Maria underscores the importance of understanding how our domain interests, supported by our interpretive traditions, are embodied in our material and non-material traces. For example, as geographers our reifications embrace our globes, maps, journals, textbooks, photos, software, labs, computers, and countless other ‘things.’ Our performances include our lectures, casual meetings in the hall, arranged meetings behind closed doors, and conferences. Our practice includes the construction of our research and the reporting of that research in ways

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that extend the boundaries of our knowledge and wisdom. It also includes the construction of more effective ways to teach the fascinating subject of geography to curious, and sometimes not so curious, minds. As geographers, I believe we need to be aware of and sensitive to the functioning of place-based communities of practice both because we participate, daily, in one and because these communities quite often ‘take place’ in our areas of research. Our positionality in such a community likely shapes the way we look at the world, the questions we believe are important to ask and answer, the methods we choose to conduct our research and teach out subject matter, to name but a few ways we are influenced. Likewise, many of the communities we are curious about are communities of practice. We need to understand how the employment of traces culturally orders and geographically borders these communities and promotes varying degrees of homogeneity within them. We need to be sensitive to the manner in which traces embody their interpretive traditions and fuel their practices. We need to be prepared to study domain-centered place-based communities and perhaps, based on those studies, to suggest normative ways those communities can enhance their places through development and spatial deployment of traces. Being prepared to do these things requires a theoretically informed language and a methodologically sound approach to that research. That is what I have delivered to the discipline in this dissertation. 11.1.2 - Spatial configuration, and particularly a centrally located cultural district, can contribute to the successful cultivation of a particular cultural identity in a place-based community of practice When respondents were asked about reifications and performances, they overwhelmingly mentioned those located in the town center and the University Mall. Performances often extend marginally beyond this area but always, at the very least, pass through the area. Field observations identified a number of reifications within the area and very few outside it. From buildings to statues, and from town meetings to devotional walks, the things and performances that culturally order the community are concentrated in the town center and University Mall. This qualitative data, which I analyzed in a preliminary fashion nightly while in the field, led to the tentative conclusion that the community had developed a cultural district that included the portion of the town center that fronted Annunciation Circle, the Oratory, the University Mall, and the buildings that fronted the mall.

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This conclusion was subsequently supported by quantitative analysis. Spatial clustering showed that the reifications are highly clustered in the cultural district. Analysis of the mapping data by respondents demonstrated that the sites they find important are also highly clustered in this area. As expected, a Moran’s Index analysis indicated significant spatial autocorrelation of the location of important places with similar count values for reifications within walking distance. A predictive surface determined how many respondents are likely to indicate an important area falls within the surface’s different regions. All of that data supports the view that Ave Maria has a cultural district. The importance of the district is highlighted by its placement. Space syntax showed that the road network is configured to move traffic to the town center, thereby establishing the town center as the social core of the development. The cultural district is located at the center of that social core. Intervisibility analysis showed visual continuity across the cultural district and particularly emphasized the area from the front of the Oratory west across the mall. Morphogenetic analysis demonstrated how the spatial configuration of the district promotes the community’s domain interest. First, it provides the community with a means for sidestepping potential separation issues in the First Amendment. Second, it precludes the establishment of any other worship centers at the most geographically choice location of the development. Third, it results in a tight integration between the community’s domain and the other day-to-day aspects of life. When it was time for the community to wrestle with its first major practice challenge, Jackson Lab, members turned to this tightly integrated area to hold the discussions that negotiated the values of their interpretive tradition. The cultural district serves as a reservoir for the community’s interpretive tradition and as a springboard for its practice. It culturally orders members lives to the extent that most regarded the ideology it embraces as, at the very least, normative. Some consider the ideology natural, or doxa. Members pass regularly through the district to reach the private school, to shop, and to participate in religious activities, particularly Mass. In doing so they are constantly reminded of the cultural order of the community. The Oratory, the most prominent component of the district, rises above the surrounding landscape, making it the one feature in the development easily viewed from throughout the development. It serves as a reminder to all of the cultural values that are at the heart of the community. Domain-centered place-based communities would do well to consider the construction of centrally located cultural districts embodying their own interpretive traditions. Such districts

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certainly do not need to be as elaborate as Ave Maria’s. However, I do believe that locating them in the social core of the community is important. These districts serve as the reservoir for the community’s interpretive traditions, provide them with the cultural ordering of their lives that their members desire, and serve as a matrix for the community’s daily practices. The place-based community of Ave Maria is a vital component of the lives of most of those who relocate there. It is a homogenous community focused on the day-to-day practice of conservative Catholicism. A unique collection of spatially configured cultural traces geographically border and culturally order it. The evolution of the community’s collective identity is fueled by the ongoing negotiation of the meaning of its cultural traces and performances in the face of new circumstance.

11.2 - Strengths and weaknesses of my research design

11.2.1 - Strengths In addition to the useful combination of theoretical approaches and my empirical findings that shed light on the role of landscapes in place-based communities of practice, my research methodology is a significant value of this study. Together the theory and methodology present a template for examining the convergence of geography and cultural identity in these communities. Cultural landscape analysis serves as a strong disciplinary platform for my research. Community of practice theory provides a solid framework for understanding the role of cultural traces and performances in Ave Maria. A mixed methods research approach produces research that is more complete than the exclusive focus on either quantitative or qualitative methods would have produced. The discipline offers a number of theoretical approaches as foundations for the study of places and communities. Cultural geography, and more particularly cultural landscape analysis, is very useful in the research of Ave Maria. Cultural ordering and geographical bordering, disciplinary concepts from the cultural geography literature, tie the real world of Ave Maria to the conceptual world of geography. It provides the linkages between this place and every other place permitting us, as geographers, to draw meaningful associations and distinctions between Ave Maria and other places. Cultural features, the material and non-material markings, remnants, and remains of cultural groups, provide a conceptual tie between the ‘stuff’ in Ave Maria and the geographic concepts of cultural ordering and geographic bordering. The concepts of cultural landscape analysis are useful in understanding how the cultural features of Ave Maria relate to the broad palate of cultural geography. They are, however, so 180

broad that they offer little insight about the functioning of the cultural features in the particular cultural landscape of Ave Maria. Communities of practice theory provides the conceptual framework to understand the functional relationship between the cultural features in Ave Maria and the cultural identity of the community who construct, maintain, and use them. The concepts of ‘domain,’ ‘repertoire,’ ‘reification,’ ‘participation,’ and ‘practice’ are particularly useful in understanding the functioning of Ave Maria’s cultural features. In the case of Ave Maria, the cultural features embody the community’s interpretive tradition that culturally orders the community and facilitates its practice of day-to-day conservative Catholicism. The community’s tight focus around its domain, and the embodiment of that focus in its cultural features, is a draw for those who desire that way-of-life. While the community is tolerant of people of other religious orientations, its cultural features establish a geographical bordering that results in a nearly homogenous population along the cultural axis of religious faith. My research is portable in the sense that it provides a strong theoretical and methodological approach to the study of place-based communities of practice. Studying communities like Ave Maria from the position of domain-centered place-based communities is new research. The synthesis of the theoretical concepts of cultural landscape analysis with those of communities of practice theory provides a vital platform for the study of domain-centered place-based communities. This is particularly useful to the discipline of geography which has historically been the hub of academic research on the construction and utilization of cultural landscapes and places. The theoretical approach of cultural landscape analysis is implemented by a mixed methods approach using qualitative and quantitative techniques. This approach is successful in identifying the cultural features that are important to the community and the meaning of the features to the community. It also provides significant insight into how the spatial configuration of these features supports the community’s domain focus. Interviews, observations, and a collection of textual, visual, auditory, and video data identify the important cultural features. Coding the data qualitatively and formalizing the data for representation in a GIS identify those features that are important to more than individual respondents. It results in the construction of a collection of cultural features whose meanings are important to the community.

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The meaningfulness of the selected features is identified both qualitatively and quantitatively. Coding and discourse analysis identifies qualitatively, from the community’s interpretive traditions, the meanings the community attaches to the traces and performances. Spatial configuration, analyzed quantitatively, shows the features are highly clustered in a district located at the social core of the development. My research is ethnographic in that it reports a singular attempt to study a place-based community from this theoretical and methodological perspective. However, I argue for the applicability of this perspective to a wide range of place-based communities of practice. As with most research that contains a substantial qualitative component, a collection of similar studies will broaden the applicability of my perspective. I am hesitant to suggest that this perspective is useful beyond place-based communities of practice. I believe it is a perspective that focuses on a particular class of settlements. 11.2.2 - Weaknesses 11.2.2.1 - The actual size of the community was significantly different from the planning literature projections The planning literature projected approximately 5,000 home sales in Ave Maria by the date fieldwork was conducted. At the time fieldwork was conducted approximately 387 residences were constructed. Of this approximately 303 were sold to private residents. Since many of Ave Maria’s residents live there seasonally, there were approximately 175 homes occupied during the time the fieldwork was conducted. The potential sampling pool for the research was, therefore, much smaller than anticipated. The study could have benefitted from a larger pool of potential respondents. In spite of this weakness, thirty-two households representing 11% of the total households and 18% of the households in residence during the period of fieldwork participated in the study. The households that participated represented all of the neighborhoods in the development. They appeared demographically diverse in age and sex. Since respondents came from all of the neighborhoods in the development they are believed to also represent the economic spectrum of the community. My study employs a purposeful sampling methodology. For that reason, spatial statistics in the study are not based on random sampling and may have included considerable sampling bias. While the statistics are believed to be indicative of the population in general, they can only be said to reliably indicate the subpopulation of those actually interviewed.

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Those who research these communities and places are often faced with the choice of either totally foregoing the potential insights offered by spatial statistical analysis or of availing themselves of the insights keeping in mind that they do not conform to the best statistical practices. I elect the second of these options knowing that the results indicated by the statistics are weak. I have used those insights only to support findings from other methodologies. The housing crisis that likely precipitated the low number of housing sales led to an interesting perturbation and responses that I would not have had the opportunity to examine otherwise. It is useful to study how the community is responding to the homebuilder’s restructuring of the southern neighborhoods, construction of an amenity center, and focus on marketing outside of the conservative Catholic demographic. It presents an opportunity to watch the community negotiate its meaning and borders. 11.2.2.2 - The research only examined one community A second weakness involves the research’s restriction to one community. There is no way of knowing if findings in Ave Maria are typical or how they vary across different domain foci. For example, would an artist colony benefit from a central cultural district? Would Shaker or spiritualist communities show many of the same characteristics as the Ave Maria community showed? On average, how large do cultural districts need to be to be useful to this type community? These and similar questions could be usefully addressed by future research that explores other domain-centered place-based communities.

11.3 - Future Research

My study focuses on a type of community that may become more common as society becomes more heterogeneous and as people, particularly though not exclusively the religious, experiment with domain-centered place-based communities. These communities offer cultural groups a level of homogeneity around a particular cultural axis that some find enticing. While many would find the geographical bordering and cultural ordering of such communities uncomfortable, others find it offers an opportunity to live a public way-of-life that is either prohibited in or geographically bordered from other public places. Future research would provide geographers with a more comprehensive understanding of this type of community. Comparative studies would be useful. For example, comparing Ave Maria to St Mary, Kansas (reported to be the ‘average person’s Ave Maria’), the Spiritualist communities of Lily Dale, New York and Cassadaga, Florida, the Jewish community of Kiryas Joel, New York, the Muslim community of Islamberg, New York and similar domain-centered 183

place-based religious communities offers the potential of understanding how cultural traces and their spatial configuration are employed across a spectrum of religious communities of practice. Comparative studies could also study other cultural axes. For example, the study of the Railroad Square Art Park in Tallahassee would potentially offer a constellation of art related communities of practice. Performance artists and visual artists are at least two communities who share the art park. These are non-residential communities but they are domain-centered and place-based. Those who work there share a commitment to the production and improvements of art and in that sense are homogenous around the axis of their vocation. Similarly, comparative studies can be made of a university. The practice of higher education is, arguably at least, the domain focus of the constellation of communities of practice found there. A certain homogeneity forms around that domain focus. People are there primarily to teach, learn, extend the interpretive traditions of their disciplines, or to support the efforts of those who are engaged in doing so. The individual colleges and perhaps the individual departments form the actual communities of practice in these constellations. Do universities successfully employ cultural districts? Do colleges or departments usefully employ them? The future study of more communities of this type will also offer useful information regarding the influence of population size. Are there any general patterns that can be related to the population size of the community? As examples: Is there a predictable size of community where homogeneity will break down? Do these communities begin reconfiguring as constellations of related communities at a particular point? Do they reach a particular size and fall apart? Do cultural ordering and geographic bordering become more or less extreme as the size of the community grows? A return to Ave Maria is a second area of future research. This research could yield several benefits. First, it could provide a panel study of this type of community from the beginning of the community through the time the community either ends or reaches maturity. The community has already seen the resolution of the Jackson Lab concern and the announcement of the siting of a different medical device company employing 150 and the potential siting of a brewery employing 60. In several years these industries will be in production. Do the workers live in Ave Maria? Are they conservative Catholics or are they drawn from another demographic? When the housing crisis resolves will a flood of conservative Catholics follow the first adopters into Ave Maria? Will the number of cultural traces continue to grow? Will existing traces be cleared or moved to provide space for other uses? The opportunity

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to explore the evolution of this community in cross-sectional studies represents a rich opportunity for future research. Further, if the population is larger and the nature of the study becomes less well known, it would be useful to develop and use a revised interview form and random sampling. This would provide findings that could be more easily generalized. There are also areas my study excluded that future research could engage. For example, the development took place in an environmentally sensitive area. What was the impact of the development on panther habitat and how did it effect panther populations? What are the relationships between the community and neighboring communities, many of which are farm laborers? How did the community’s standing as a stewardship district with taxing authority work out?

11.4 - Concluding Thoughts

At the outset of my research I thought Ave Maria was ‘different.’ I felt that difference had a great deal to do with its religious orientation. But I was uncertain about how the construction of a town and the cultural identity of a religiously oriented group converged. Wrestling with an adequate theoretical and methodological foundation for my work is one of the biggest challenges I faced. I am drawn to the notion of landscapes. Landscapes are all about the embodiment of cultural elements in the spaces and places of life. But they are not aspatial cultural elements. The spatial relationships of the elements matters because those relationships served to emphasize some elements and deemphasize others. I find most of my own disciplinary theoretical components in the contemporary approach to cultural landscape analysis synthesized by Anderson (2010). Anderson takes seriously the notion that ideologies are embodied in landscapes and provides a strong rational, rooted in cultural geography, for doing so. He calls these embodiments material and non-material traces. These traces serve the purpose of culturally ordering and geographically bordering a place. As such, they provide a vital linkage between the place they help to establish and the cultural groups that occupy the place. His work includes a vital critical conversation with many of the ‘space and place’ theorists including Relph, Entrikin, and Cresswell. It also takes seriously much of the ‘landscape’ theory, particularly that of Sauer. However, Anderson’s work does not go far enough in identifying the purpose of these traces in the particular form of community that I am interested in studying. Wenger’s (1998) theoretical work on domain-centered communities, communities of practice, is useful for understanding the role of traces in communities like Ave Maria. His work focuses on how domain-centered communities embody their interpretive traditions in ‘things’ such as laws, tools, 185 and paintings. He calls this category of embodiment ‘reifications.’ He also discusses how the interpretive tradition is embodied in certain performances, a category he described as ‘participations.’ Collectively ‘reifications’ and participations formed a meta-category of interpretive resources he calls the community’s ‘repertoire.’ The repertoire served as the foundation that coordinates the community’s day-to-day life, its practice. However, it is never complete. New circumstances require the ongoing modification of the repertoire, so the practice not only includes the day-to-day application of the interpretive tradition but it includes the modifications and extensions required to keep the tradition relevant. This ongoing modification requires an ongoing process of negotiation among members of the community as they modified their interpretive tradition in light of new circumstances and the things they are learning. Anderson (2010) and Wenger (1998) provide a solid conceptual framework for my research. Despite the fact they nicely complement one another, they do not appear to have been linked in previous research. I find this a pleasant surprise because I believe that for certain types of research they represent a powerful conceptual synthesis. The problem is that while both hint at methodological approaches neither develops those approaches beyond suggestions. To synthesize their conceptual views for purposes of my research requires me to develop a methodological approach to implement that research. The discipline offers a wealth of resources in this regard. A preliminary survey of Ave Maria revealed that there was a lot of money being spent and attention being paid to the construction of the community’s cultural traces suggesting that they were laden with both meaning and value. Casual conversations with several members of the community during a preliminary site visit made it clear that these traces were meaningful and valuable not only to those who constructed them but to those who moved to the community. I realized early on that I needed methods that would quip me to understand the meaning and value of the traces and I decided on qualitative methods. My purpose in using the qualitative methods is to understand the convergence of meaning and value embodied in the cultural traces and the cultural group(s) that find them meaningful and valuable. It also appeared at the outset that the traces were intentionally, rather than randomly, placed. This suggested the intentional spatial configuration of elements in the landscape. While I was unclear about the configuration and the purpose such configuration potentially serve, I felt it important to examine it in greater detail. A growing literature on combinations of qualitative and quantitative research suggests methods I felt would be useful to understanding the role of spatial

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configuration. In order to capture the meaning and purpose of the elements in the landscape and to identify the important role spatial configuration plays in the placement of those elements, I selected a mixed methods approach to my research. The research produced very satisfying results. While I had hoped to find the community homogenous to some degree, I am actually surprised by the degree of homogeneity around the axis of the community’s domain focus, conservative Catholicism. This is a surprise because a lot of recent research in Geography focuses on the rapid growth of heterogeneity. Heterogeneous communities and places appear to meet the needs of most people. However, Ave Maria suggests that some cultural groups cannot satisfactorily meet their needs in a highly heterogeneous place. This poses a number of interesting questions for future research including ethical questions about the formation of homogenous communities around domain foci some may find offensive and the integration of essentially homogenous communities and places in the context of the daily lives of most people (such as academia in our lives). I believe geographers have a lot of substantive content to contribute to these discussions and that content will expand as our understanding of these communities expands. My research is producing interesting results around the contributions spatial configuration makes to cultural ordering and geographic bordering. Just as composition in a painting emphasizes certain elements and themes, spatial configuration emphasizes certain traces in a landscape. Ave Maria successfully employs spatial configuration several ways. It uses spatial configuration to emphasize its conservative Catholic domain focus through the development of a cultural district at the development’s social core. It precludes competing religious themes in this very important geographic location by spatially configuring it such that there is no spatial room for other religious themes. It sidesteps First Amendment separation issues through the specific form of its spatial configuration of the cultural district. When the homebuilder decides, in light of the collapse of the housing bubble, it needs to emphasize a different cultural theme it has to make strategic moves to circumvent the cultural ordering and geographic bordering that are already spatially anchored, and emphasized, in the current configuration of the development. Finally, one has to ask, does the cultural ordering and geographic bordering embodied in the spatially configured cultural traces, the cultural geography of the place, work for the community that resides there? Without question, it does. The residents and shop owners like

187 looking out the front windows of their shops and seeing the Oratory. It embodies their view that their faith should be at the center of every aspect of their lives. They appreciate the presence of the religious orders dressed in their traditional regalia. Seeing them reminds the residents of the cultural order that permeates their town, an order that they embrace and appreciate. In concluding my study of Ave Maria, I am of the opinion that the members of the community feel like they have found their place in the world when they move to Ave Maria. What happens in and around town makes sense to them in ways that other places never have.

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APPENDIX A

INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BOARD – USE OF HUMAN SUBJECTS IN RESEARCH APPROVALS AND COPIES OF APPROVED FORMS

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190 review protocols as often as needed to insure that the project is being conducted in compliance with our institution and with DHHS regulations.

This institution has an Assurance on file with the Office for Human Research Protection. The Assurance Number is IRB00000446.

Cc: J Stallins, Advisor HSC No. 2010.4475

2

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Huff, Brad

From: Human Subjects < [email protected] > Sent: Wt>,tfn••crl;>v November 10, 2010 10:51 AM To: Cc: Subject: ects in Research -Approval Memorandum Attachments: 2010.5420 ICF.pdf

Office ofthe Vice President For Research Human Subjects Committee Tallahassee, Florida 32306-2742 {8SO) 644-8673 · FAX {850) 644-4392

APPROVAL MEMORANDUM (for change in research protocol)

Date: 11/10/2010

To: Brad Huff

.- Address· Dept.: G ......

From: Thomas L Jacobson, Cha ir

Re: Use of Human Subjects in Research (Approval for Change in Protocol) Project entitled: Doctoral Dissertation Research: Using Space Syntax and Mixed Methods To Characterize Mental Models of the Built Environment

The form that you submitted to this office in regard to the requested change/amendment to your research protocol for the above-referenced project has been reviewed and approved.

If the project has not been completed by 6/27/2011, you must request a renewal of approval for continuation of the project. As a courtesy, a renewal notice will be sent to you prior to your expiration date; however, it is your responsibility as the Principal Investigator to timely request renewal of your approval from the Committee.

By copy of this memorandum, the chairman of your department and/or your major professor is reminded that he/she is responsible for being informed concerning research projects involving human subjects in the department, and should review protocols as often as needed to insure that the project is being conducted in compliance with our institution and with DHHS regulations.

This institution has an Assurance on file with the Office for Human Research Protection. The Assurance Number is IRB00000446.

Cc: J Stallins, Advisor HSC No. 2010.5420

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We understand that you privacy is im portant to you. We will retain your signed consent form and other documents for three years after the end of our study in accord with university mandated procedures and then we will destroy them by shredding them in a cross-cut shredder. During the three years we must retain the paper copies, the consent forms will be stored in a different physical location than the other documents. The only people authorized to have access to the consent forms or the other documents are members of the research team, Brad Huff's Doctoral Dissertation Committee, and the U ni versity's Institutional Review Board. The interview documents will be converted to an electronic format for analysis. The electronic version will be encrypted to prevent violation of your privacy and they too will be destroyed at the end of the mandated retention period.

The results of these interviews will be aggregated together thereby further eliminating any personally identifying information you may share with us. Maps that you draw may be included as illustrations but there will not be any personally identifying information on them unless you choose to put it on the map. If you would like for us to be able to include specific quotations from you made during our interview in the study, there is a place for you to indicate this preference by providing your name, address, and telephone number at the end of the interview. Quotation by you would be cited in the study by reference to a fictitious set of initials but your quotation would appear as closely as possibl e to your original wording. For example, the study might read, "According to JR, ' I first heard about Ave Maria at ..

Florida State University believes that it is important for people involved in research projects sponsored by the university to be informed about the nature of the research, voluntarily consent to participate in it, and enj oy protection of their privacy. For that reason the Institutional Review Board at Florida State University has reviewed and approved this consent form, the interview questions, the map document, the research procedures, the retention procedures, and the reporting procedures we are using.

Other than a cup of coffee or a soft drink during the interview, there will not be any benefit or compensation for participating in the study other than the personal satisfaction of helping us better understand how town's develop character.

Confidentiality:

The records of this study will be kept private and confidential to the extent permitted by law. In any sort of report we might publish, we will make our best effort to not include any information that will make it possible to identify a subject unless that subject has provided specific approval for direct quotation. Research records will be stored securely and only researchers will have access to the records.

Voluntary Nature of the Study:

Participation in thi s study is voluntary. Your decision whether or not to participate will not affect your current or future relations with the Uni versity. If you decide to

FSU Human Subjects Committee Approved 1119/10. Void after 6/27/11 HSC# 2010.5420

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Residents Interview Form

Study ID Number:

Interview date:

Interview time:

Interviewer’s name:

1 Are you 18 years old or older?

Yes – (go to Question 2)

No – (terminate interview)

2 Are you a student at the university?

Yes

Are you also a permanent resident of Ave Maria?

Yes – (go to Question 3)

No – (terminate interview)

No – (go to Question 3)

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3 Are you a resident of Ave Maria?

No – (go to Question 3b)

Yes – (proceed)

How long have you lived in Ave Maria?

____ Less than 1 year

____ 1 to 3 years

____ 4 or more years

What were some of the things that influenced your decision to move here?

____ Personal faith

____ Oratory

____ University

____ Job with university

____ Other employment

Inside or outside of Ave Maria? ______

____ The amenities of the community

____ Golf course

____ Proximity to Naples

______

______

____ Florida

____ Others

______

______

(go to Question 4)

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3b (No)

Are you considering relocating here?

No – (terminate interview )

Yes

What are some of the things that will influence your decision to move here?

____ Personal faith

____ Oratory

____ University

____ Job with university

____ Other employment

Inside or outside of Ave Maria? ______

____ The amenities of the community

____ Golf course

____ Proximity to Naples

______

______

____ Florida

____ Others

______

______

(go to Question 4)

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4 Can you recall when and how you first heard of Ave Maria?

____ News article

____ Advertisement

____ Personal acquaintances (friends, family, etc.)

____ Religious setting

____ Do not recall

____ Other

______

______

5 (Hand the respondent a blank map)

Please mark the places in Ave Maria that are important to you by putting a number at each location. (When the map is completed go through each numbered place and ask what it is and why it is important. )

Thank you, we will come back to your map in a moment but first I would like to ask several questions.

6 What is your religious faith?

____ Roman Catholic

____ Other

______

7 Were you raised in this faith?

____ Yes (if they became a member of this faith before age 18)

____ No (if they became a member of this faith on or after age 18)

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8 What are some of the most important aspects of your faith to you?

____ Worship

____ Sunday

____ Weekday

____ Special Masses (weddings, funerals, for particular persons, etc.)

____ Other

______

____ Sacraments

____ Confession

____ Communion

____ Other

______

____ Devotional

____ Praying the Rosary

____ Other prayers

____ Vigil (or votive) lights

____ Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and other theological concepts

______

______

____ Role of the Church

______

______

____ Holy Days

____ Other

______

______

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9 What does your faith teach about “holy” or “sacred” places? For example, what are they? What makes them “holy” or “sacred”? How are they different than other places? Are there any special ways to conduct yourself when you are in one?

______

______

______

______

10 “Sacred or holy places”, to geographers, generally refer to places that have special religious meaning. They can be as large as entire cities. For example, Salt Lake City might be considered sacred to Mormons, the Vatican to Catholics, and Mecca to Muslims. And sacred places can be as small a place as a cemetery, a garden, or a fresh water spring. The common denominator is that these places have special religious meaning. Do you consider Ave Maria, as a whole, a “holy” or a “sacred” place in the sense that geographers speak of such terms? In other words, do you find special religious meaning in this place, in Ave Maria? Why or why not?

______

______

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11 Now, as opposed to Ave Maria as a whole, do any particular places in Ave Maria hold special religious meaning for you? Where are they? How would you describe them? Can you describe the special religious meaning they hold for you? (If the respondent mentions the same sites identified when the map was made, simply note the site.)

______

______

______

12 Have you already marked all of these places on the map you made for me?

13 These are a few places, activities, and things in Ave Maria that seemed like they might be sacred places to me. (hand the respondent the Sites card). Please rank their importance to you.

____ Devotional meditation at Adoration Chapel at AMU

____ Annunciation Sculpture Site

____ Sunday Mass at the Oratory

____ Weekday Mass at the Oratory

____ Devotional meditation at the Oratory

____ Streets with religious names in Ave Maria

____ Theology on Tap at Queen Mary’s Pub

____ Religious garden statutes at some homes in Ave Maria

Geography is the study of the impact of people upon places and times and, vice versa, the impact of places and times on people. For example, many may not typically think of Queen Mary’s Pub when thinking of the religious geography of Ave Maria. However, Theology on Tap events are held there. For some, those events might be significant to their faith. So while they normally would not think of the Pub as part of the religious geography of Ave Maria, during the times the Theology on Tap events occur they might include it.

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14 Are there sites and events that I missed when I made my list that you would like to add to the list? How do you rank them?

______

______

______

15 What totally new things would you like to see added to Ave Maria so that it more completely reflects your personal faith?

______

______

______

16 Please take a moment and indicate on the map you drew earlier where some of the additions you would like to see in Ave Maria might go?

17 Monuments are special places set aside to commemorate persons or events that are important. There are a wide range of monuments including religious structures, statutes, grave stones, triumphal arches, columns, obelisks, and I am sure many other things. What are several monuments around Ave Maria? (When a monument is named, ask what it’s purpose is, what it means to the person, and whether or not it is a religious monument. If the person asks you what you mean, you may suggest that the statue of Mary in front of the Adoration Chapel reminds many of the virtues of Mary and the Oratory is the place where the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus are celebrated.)

______

______

______

______

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18 If your friend was considering a move to Ave Maria and wanted to know if your views about your faith have changed since you moved here, what would you tell them?

______

______

______

______

I have just one more question and a request. The question first.

19 I have three broad brackets of age. Into which one would you fall?

____ 18 to 45

____ 46 to 65

____ 65 and over

And now the request.

Will you please take with you a map of Ave Maria that we have assembled? You will notice that some of the places I mentioned earlier are located on the map. If you think of any other places in Ave Maria that reflect your faith, or additions to Ave Maria that you would like to see made to better reflect your faith, please write them in on the map. Please mail the map to me in about a week. I have enclosed a self- addressed stamped envelope with the map which will make it easy for you to send it back to us. I have also included a business card so that you may call and discuss any additional thoughts you have with the researcher after the interview is concluded.

Finally, would you like for the researcher to be able to directly quote some of the things you told me today in his dissertation? All quotations are identified by a fictitious set of initials. For example, if I were to quote John Smith, the passage might read, “According to RL, ‘I moved to Ave Maria because ….’” Would you like to permit the researcher to use direct quotations from our interview? (If the interviewee would like to be quoted, obtain a second signature and related information on the Consent Form. In either case, provide the interviewee with a Debriefing Form and thank them for their participation.)

____ Permits direct quotations

____ Does not permit direct quotations

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Religious Sites Card

Please rank the importance of these items to your personal faith

Very Important Neutral Unimportant Not at all Negative Important important Aspect of community

Devotional meditation at Adoration Chapel at AMU

Annunciation Sculpture Site

Weekday Mass at the Oratory

Sunday Mass at the Oratory

Devotional meditation at the Oratory

Streets with religious names in Ave Maria

Theology on Tap at Queen Mary’s Pub

Religious garden statutes at some homes in Ave Maria

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Your assistance is sincerely appreciated!

Thank you for your participation in today’s study. Geographers are interested in understanding the connections between people’s worldviews and the towns they plan, construct, maintain, and modify. Many studies have indicated that how we view the world influences the world we construct for ourselves. Every town is developed from a number of worldviews. For example, there are the worldviews of urban planners, businesses, institutions, industries, and those of residents with many different cultural identities to name but a few. Our work studies how worldviews are woven into the geography of a town – into the streets, buildings, and parks of a town for example. We believe the weaving of worldviews into the geography of the places where we live gives those places their particular character. Ave Maria is a new town. It has been developed in accord with recent urban planning trends and regulations following the style of New Urbanism. New Urbanism emphasizes the importance of people interacting in meaningful ways with one another. For example, the town center of Ave Maria emphasizes walking about town rather than driving about town. It is easy to greet friends and neighbors while doing your shopping when you walk from store to store. Further, those who have developed Ave Maria have had to conform to contemporary planning regulations. Often these regulations control things such as how much commercial space there can be in the town center, how many residents can be built on an acre of land, and how the streets must be constructed. There are many New Urban communities in Florida that we could have studied. The opportunity to study Ave Maria offers something very special. Ave Maria offers us the opportunity to study the role of religious faith in creating and maintaining the character of places. Centuries ago the role of religious faith in the creation and maintenance of the character of a towns was both obvious and taken for granted. It is unusual in contemporary times for a town to be developed primarily around religious values. Most towns being developed now incorporate some religious values in their geographies. But Ave Maria is rather unique in the depth of its emphasis on these values. We hope that in studying Ave Maria we will come to a clearer understanding of how worldviews in general and religious worldviews in particular are woven into the texture, the character, of towns. We employ a number of security measures to protect the confidentiality of the information we collect in this study. These measures include separating the consent form which contains a signature consenting to the interview and, if you elected to allow us to directly quote you, a second signature with an address and telephone number, from the interview responses and map. The form and data are related through a randomly generated study identification number. The additional map that you were asked to take with you is also coded with that number. You do not need to put any personally identifying information on this map and by returning it in the provided self-addressed postage paid envelope you will not need to include any personally identifying information on the envelope. We will retain the consent forms and other documents for three years after the end of our study in accord with university mandated procedures and then we will destroy them by shredding them in a cross-cut shredder. During the three years we must retain the paper copies, the consent forms will be stored in a different physical location than the other documents. The only people authorized to have access to the consent forms or the other documents are members of the research team, Brad Huff’s Doctoral Dissertation Committee, and the University’s Institutional Review Board. The interview documents will be converted to an electronic format for analysis. The electronic version will be encrypted to prevent privacy violations and they too will be destroyed at the end of the mandated retention period. The results of these interviews will be aggregated together thereby further eliminating any personally identifying information. Maps that you have drawn may be included as illustrations in the dissertation but there will not be any personally identifying information on them unless you choose to put it on the map. If you have elected to allow us to include direct quotations from you made during our interview in the study, there was a place for you to indicate this preference by

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providing your name, address, and telephone number at the end of the interview on the consent form. Quotations by you will be cited in the study by reference to a fictitious set of initials but your quotation would appear as closely as possible to your original wording. For example, the study might read, “According to JR, ‘I first heard about Ave Maria at …’” Your participation today is appreciated and will help geographers better understand how worldviews are woven into the geographic textures of towns. We ask that you do not discuss the nature of the study with others who may later participate in it, as this could affect the validity of our research conclusions. If you have any questions or concerns, you are welcome to talk with Brad Huff at of the FSU Geography Department. If you have any questions about subjects’ rights, you may contact the FSU IRB Secretary at (850) 644-8633. If your participation in this study has caused you concerns, anxiety, or otherwise distressed you, you may contact the FSU Counseling Center at (850) 644-1234, the Mental Health Association of SW Florida at (239) 261-5405, or Catholic Charities of Collier County at (239) 455-2655. If you would like to learn more about this research topic, we suggest the following references:

Baxa, P. 2010. Roads and ruins : the symbolic landscape of fascist Rome. Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press.

Duncan, J. S. 1990. The city as text : the politics of landscape interpretation in the Kandyan kingdom. Cambridge, England ; New York: Cambridge University Press.

Jackson, J. B. 1984. Discovering the Vernacular Landscape. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Yoon, H. 1986. Maori mind, Maori land : essays on the cultural geography of the Maori people from an outsider's perspective. Berne ; New York: P. Lang.

THANK YOU AGAIN FOR YOUR PARTICIPATION.

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APPENDIX B

IDENTIFICATION OF SAMPLES COLLECTED IN VARIOUS CATEGORIES OF ‘REPRESENTATIONAL MATERIALS’

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The categories of additional representational materials collected for my research was presented in Chapter 5. This appendix identifies specific examples of the materials contained in each category.

a) Texts I. Public media (Representative) » City of God, The Boston Phoenix, 2005 » Orthodox, Florida, Commonweal, 2006 » Halfway to Heaven: A Catholic Millionaire's Dream Town Draws Fire, Newsweek, 2006 » ‘Pizza pope’ builds a Catholic heaven, The Sunday Times (London), 2006 » Ave Maria – A Town Without a Vote (Multipart Series), Naples Daily News, 2009 » Editorial: Ave Maria … developers should put their integrity into law, Naples Daily News, 2009 » Testing Their Faith, St. Petersburg Times, 2009 » Church must return to conservative roots, says Tom Monaghan, The Catholic Register (Toronto), 2010 » Lively Discussion on Jackson Lab at Ave Maria Town Forum, Ave Maria Herald, 2010 » Jackson Lab Meeting Flyer, unidentified meeting organizers, 2010 » Towey renews Florida ties in Naples, Tallahassee Democrat, 2011 II. Planning and regulatory documents (Representative) » Rural Land Stewardship Program 2007 Annual Report to the Legislature » HB 1625, Ave Maria Stewardship District bill, Florida Legislature, 2004 » Ave Maria Town Plan, Developer’s Stewardship Receiving Area Development Document submitted to Collier County, apparent date December 2004 III. Internal documents (Representative) » Residents’ Disclosure Statement » Developer Counsel’s undated response to Naples series on ‘Town Without A Vote’ » An Introduction to Community Development and Stewardship Districts, Developer’ Counsel, 2007 » Ave Maria Stewardship Community District Factsheet, Developer’s Counsel, 2003 » Ave Maria Stewardship Community District – Size Determination, Communication from Paul Marinelli to Tom Sansbury, 2003 IV. Promotional or self-interpretative documents (Representative) » Casting A Vision – A Ripple Effect, Tom Monaghan, 2008

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» Priests for Ave Maria » Ave Maria: Your family, your friends, your dream … Your town! » Exercise & Nature Trails as Ave Maria » Welcome to Ave Maria » Institute for Pastoral Theology, Ave Maria University » Ave Maria Mutual Funds » Sculpting the Annunciation Relief » Gyrene Gazette (University newsletter) » Quasi-Parish of Ave Maria Oratory (newsletter) » Ave Maria Trolley Tours (promotional piece for the tour) » Ave Maria Trolley Tours Promotional Literature (provided on the tour) » Ave Maria University and Town » Graduate Programs in Theology (academic catalogue) b) Visual (i.e. Maps, photos, sketches, drawings, statuary, web sites, building facades) (Representative) » Maps completed by residents identifying locations in Ave Maria that are “important” to them » U Can’t B Both Catholic & Pro-Choice (Bumper sticker) » Hope to see you soon (Pulte Homes mailer) » Illustrations from texts (for example Page 43 on signage from the Town Plan) » Statues found around the town and university » Ave Maria websites » The Bishop’s Miter design of the Oratory c) Videos » Florida Heaven on Earth, PBS, 2010 » Town Hall Meeting – Jackson Labs, Ave Maria News, 2010 » The Rise of a Catholic Town, CNN, 2007

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APPENDIX C

ONTOLOGY SCREENSHOTS DISPLAYING ITS CONFIGURATION

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Protégé, the open source program used to develop the ontology, provides a great deal of useful structure for constructing the ontology and populating the knowledge base. However, it is lacking in its capacity to produce reports of either the ontology or the knowledge base. Therefore, Appendix C contains a number of screen shots from Protégé. The first screen shot on each page identifies the attributes associated with a class in the ontology and some of the key properties of each attribute. The second screen shot on each page identifies instances in the knowledge base associated with the class.

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Brad Huff earned a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of West Florida in Pensacola, Florida in 1976. He earned a Master of Divinity from Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia in 1979. He has been a Presbyterian minister and a commercial real estate appraiser throughout most of his professional life.

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