A ways back, I read a post where someone talked about new development disrupting the 'social compacts" of their neighborhood. Today, I realized that part of what makes suburbia 'work' is regulation. Not legal regulation, but social regulation, via social shaming. It's a series of unwritten rules and often unspoken rules with bounds established by the informal process of social shaming, gossip and stigma.
Which relies on people sharing the same norms and values. So when your neighborhood ceases to consist solely of family households (with children), suburbia stops working. Clearest example I can cite is parking: in suburbia, you only park in front of your own house. Even if you have five cars and your neighbor has one, you only park on 'your' curb. As a urban renter, the whole idea is laughable: I park where-ever I can find parking, regardless of whose house it is. So as a suburban neighborhood shifts over, regulating things like parking has to shift from being a social compact to having legal framework. So you see the emergence of resident parking programs. Which is on it's face grossly inequiable--residents have no more right to the public right of way than any other person. But there is another sense of the word 'equitable', a more legal sense, that says when you've done someone harm, you owe them recompense, that they should be no worse off than they were before. Personally, I'm of the "Paris is worth a mass" school of thought. If a resident parking program that unfairly privileges incumbents is the price of getting new housing permitted, I'm willing to pay it. Because when you come down to it, most neighbor opposition is due to parking--people don't want to have the privilege they've been enjoying impaired.
I have a hard time keeping mum when someone talks about their 'right' to parking, because they haven't got one, in the legal sense. But urban history is pretty clear--the process of getting rights largely consists of traditional and customary privileges becoming enshrined in law (by treaty or charter)*. So insisting on a right to parking is hardly unprecedented or unreasonable.
It's worth a moment to talk to talk about the rest of the suburban social contract: most of it governs the acceptable use of 'public' space: streets, 'park strips', sidewalks. But a surprising portion of it governs lawns/landscaping. It's your property, but your neighbor has to look at it, which affects their ability to enjoy their own property. But, since lawn care is expensive, it's one of the first thing that breaks down when people not party to the 'suburban social contract' move in. Hence, there are a surprising number of public laws governing requirements to mow.
There is an interesting class lens of the suburban social contract: things that happen in public space are regulated by public law, and so middle-class people have access to legal relief--they can call the police or code enforcement. But things like fences fall largely outside that penumbra. So it's only those wealthy enough to say 'my lawyer' who legally contest this. So you see a surprising amount of litigation about fences, quasi-fences, trees, spite fences, etc.
*Which I suspect is why 'blue' cities are having a hard time advocating for themselves versus their red home states--there is a reliance on using courts to establish 'rights', as opposed to insisting on customary rights. And perhaps cities in conflict with their home state would do better to insist of legal recognition of the customary rights they've been enjoying.