Separate Places: Crime and Security in Gated Communities

The drive to redefine territory and protect neighborhood boundaries is being felt in communities of all income levels throughout this country's metropolitan areas. In the last ten to 15 years, gated communities, one of the more dramatic forms of residential boundaries, have sprung up around the country. Millions of Americans are turning to walls and fences around communal residential space that was previously integrated with the larger shared civic space. This era of dramatic demographic, economic, and social changes brings with it a growing crisis of future expectations. Many feel vulnerable, unsure of their place and their communities in the face of rapid change. This feeling is reflected in an increasing fear of crime unrelated to actual trends and to the growing number of methods used to control the physical environment for both social and economic security. The phenomenon of walled cities and gated communities is a dramatic manifestation of a new fortress mentality growing in America. Gated communities are residential areas with restricted access that makes normally public spaces private. Access is controlled by physical barriers, walled or fenced perimeters, and gated or guarded entrances. Gated communities include both new housing developments and older residential areas retrofitted with barricades and fences. They represent a phenomenon different from apartment or condominium buildings with security systems or doormen. There, a doorman precludes public access only to a lobby or hallways-the private space within a building. Gated communities preclude public access to roads, sidewalks, parks, open space, and playgrounds-all resources that in earlier eras would have been open and accessible to all citizens of a locality. The best estimate is that 2.5 million American families have already sought out this new refuge from the problems of urbanization, and their numbers are growing.1