This paper describes how the transformation of coastal New Zealand is directly connected to the dislocation and marginalisation of many Māori coastal communities. It focuses on how this transformation is played out in text and talk and how certain types of boundaries function as important determinants in the construction and social order of coastal New Zealand. The high value and demand placed on specific, accessible ‘cadastral’ parcels of private coastal property dictates that much of New Zealand's coast is mapped according to constructs of wealth and desirability. In other parts of the country where development pressures on the coast are less prevalent, coastal communities are less evidently connected to markers of affluence and/or ‘whiteness’. In these less disciplined spaces, uncertainty and liminality is more influential in the making of coastal places. Through an analysis of interviews with coastal planners and residents of coastal communities it is revealed that particular hegemonies, through the discourses they produce, attempt to assert a particular socio‐spatial epistemology on counter‐hegemonic groups in an effort to develop and manage the coast. Communities that revealed an alternative social ordering are described as messy and difficult to manage, while other coastal communities are marketed as exclusive, where model residents inhabit model places.