Gated community


A gated community is a form of residential community or housing estate containing strictly controlled entrances for pedestrians, bicycles, and automobiles, and often characterized by a closed perimeter of walls and fences. Gated communities usually consist of small residential streets and include various shared amenities. For smaller communities, these amenities may include only a park or other common area. For larger communities, it may be possible for residents to stay within the community for most daily activities. Gated communities are a type of common interest development, but are distinct from intentional communities.
For socio-historical reasons, in the developed world they exist primarily in the United States.
Given that gated communities are spatially a type of enclave, Setha M. Low, an anthropologist, has argued that they have a negative effect on the net social capital of the broader community outside the gated community. Some gated communities, usually called "guard-gated communities", are staffed by private security guards and are often home to high-value properties, and/or are set up as retirement villages.

Features

Besides the services of gatekeepers, many gated communities provide other amenities. These may depend on a number of factors including geographical location, demographic composition, community structure, and community fees collected. When there are sub-associations that belong to master associations, the master association may provide many of the amenities. In general, the larger the association the more amenities that can be provided.
Amenities also depend on the type of housing. For example, single-family-home communities may not have a common-area swimming pool, since individual home-owners have the ability to construct their own private pools. A condominium, on the other hand, may offer a community pool, since the individual units do not have the option of a private pool installation.
Typical amenities offered can include one or more:
In Brazil, the most widespread form of gated community is called "condomínio fechado" and is the object of desire of the upper classes. Such a place is a small town with its own infrastructure. The purpose of such a community is to protect its residents from exterior violence. The same philosophy is seen on closed buildings and most shopping centres.
In Mexico, the most common form of a gated community is called privada, fraccionamiento, or condominio, in which privadas and fraccionamientos are mostly composed of individual, single-family houses grouped, these may vary on size and shape, sometimes, houses will be individually developed and built while in others houses are of the same design and shape. In fraccionamientos, these houses may have access to amenities within the gated zone as well, such as parks, gyms, party rooms, pools and maintenance by the residential's administration. Condominios are commonly similar to fraccionamientos and privadas, but applied in a scheme of apartment buildings.
In Pakistan, gated communities are located in big as well as small cities and are considered the standard of high quality living. Defence Housing Authority and Bahria Town are major private gated community developers and administrators and one of the largest in the world. The assets of Bahria Town itself are worth $30 billion. Most gated communities in Pakistan have public parks, schools, hospitals, shopping malls, gymnasiums, and country clubs.
In Argentina, they are called "barrios privados" or just "countries" and are often seen as a symbol of wealth. However, gated communities enjoy dubious social prestige. While most gated communities have only houses, some bigger ones, such as Nordelta, have their own hospital, school, shopping mall, and more.
In post-apartheid South Africa, gated communities have mushroomed in response to high levels of violent crime. They are commonly referred to as "complexes" but also broadly classified as "security villages" or "enclosed neighbourhoods". Some of the newest neighbourhoods being developed are almost entirely composed of security villages, some with malls and few other essential services. In part, property developers have adopted this response to counter squatting, which local residents fear due to associated crime, and which often results in a protracted eviction process.
They are popular in southern China and Hong Kong, where most of the new apartment compounds have 24/7 guards on duty, and for some high-end residences, facial recognition systems to grant residents and domestic workers entry into the compound. The most famous of which is Clifford Estates in Guangzhou.
In Saudi Arabia, gated communities have existed since the discovery of oil, mainly to accommodate families from Europe or North America. After threat levels increased from the late 1990s on against foreigners in general and U.S. citizens in particular, gates became armed, sometimes heavily, and all vehicles are inspected. Marksmen and Saudi Arabian National Guard armored vehicles appeared in certain times, markedly after recent terrorist attacks in areas near-by, targeting people from European or North American countries.
Gated communities are rare in continental Europe and Japan.

Criticism

Proponents of gated communities maintain that the reduction or exclusion of people who would be only passing through, or more generally, of all non-local people, makes any "stranger" much more recognisable in the closed local environment, and thus reduces crime danger. However, some have argued that, since only a very small proportion of all non-local people passing through the area are potential criminals, increased traffic should increase rather than decrease safety by having more people around whose presence could deter criminal behaviour or who could provide assistance during an incident.
Another criticism is that gated communities offer a false sense of security. Some studies indicate that safety in gated communities may be more illusion than reality and that gated communities in suburban areas of the United States have no less crime than similar non-gated neighbourhoods.
In a paper, Vanessa Watson includes gated communities within a class of "African urban fantasies": attempts to remake African cities in the vein of Dubai or Singapore. In Watson's analysis, this kind of urban planning prizes exclusionary and self-contained spaces that limit opportunities for interaction between different classes, while worsening marginalization of the urban poor.
A study done by Breetzke, Landman & Cohn investigated the effect of gated communities on individual's risk of burglary victimization in South Africa. Results showed that not only are gated communities not able to reduce burglary, but even facilitate criminal activities. For both the gated communities and the areas surrounding them, the densities of burglary were found to be four times higher than that of Tshwane. The crime rates did not decrease in areas that were far away from the gated communities. Also, the high risk of burglaries was found consistent in both daytime and night-time. As this research on the effect of gated communities in South Africa reflects a negative correlation between the use of gated communities and crime prevention, the effectiveness of gated communities is in doubt.

Common economic model types

  • Life-style — country clubs, retirement developments.
  • Prestige — gates for status appeal
  • Physical security communities — gates for crime and traffic.
  • Purpose-designed communities — catering to foreigners

    Comparison to closed cities

are different from the gated communities.
  • The guard duty in closed cities is free to residents.
  • The public transport in closed cities may go with transit checkpoints or checking passes/passports at technical stops and available to others outside the security area. Within a gated community in the best cases, the bus stop is opposite the checkpoint; a few offer free buses. Via gated communities buses go due to easement or good will.
  • Fares and communal payments in closed cities are often equal, if it would be a common city. In gated communities, service companies raise non legally fixed tariffs because it is difficult for those communities either to negotiate lower terms or knock out this service company.

    Countries

A limited number of gated communities have long been established for foreigners in various countries of the world:
There are many gated communities in Argentina, especially in Greater Buenos Aires, in the suburb of Pilar, 60 km N of Buenos Aires city, and in other suburban areas, such as Nordelta. Tortugas Country Club was the first gated community developed in Argentina, dating from the 1930s/1940s, but most date from the 1990s, when liberal reforms were consolidated.
Since Buenos Aires has been traditionally regarded as a socially integrated city, gated communities have been the subject of research by sociologists. Gated communities are an important way through middle and upper-class people cope with insecurity in Greater Buenos Aires.
As Mara Dicenta writes, "The story of Nordelta exposes how violent environments are enacted through whiteness and drives for elite distinction. Exemplified by Nordelta, MPCs generate profit by transforming rural into elite lands while rearticulating racial and spatial borders that make distinctions sharper, more guarded, and less porous—between centers and peripheries, grounded and flooded lands, or poachers and conservationists. MPCs originated in the U.S. and continue to circulate American imaginaries of race, segregation, and neoliberal commons worldwide. In this process, they are met with different forms of slow violence rooted in colonial and postcolonial national geographies. Furthermore, in seeking to capitalize on those racialized differences, global real estate corporations also circulate and help materialize homogenizing visions of racial formation."