Beyond Gated Communities

Samer Bagaeen, Ola Uduku

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317659044
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Research on gated communities is moving away from the hard concept of a 'gated community' to the more fluid one of urban gating. The latter allows communities to be viewed through a new lens of soft boundaries, modern communication and networks of influence.

The book, written by an international team of experts, builds on the research of Bagaeen and Uduku's previous edited publication, Gated Communities (Routledge 2010) and relates recent events to trends in urban research, showing how the discussion has moved from privatised to newly collectivised spaces, which have been the focal point for events such as the Occupy London movement and the Arab Spring.

Communities are now more mobilised and connected than ever, and Beyond Gated Communities shows how neighbourhoods can become part of a global network beyond their own gates. With chapters on Australia, Canada, Europe, South America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East, this is a truly international resource for scholars and students of urban studies interested in this dynamic, growing area of research.

1 Beyond gated communities Urban gating, soft boundaries and networks of influence and affluence

Samer Bagaeen

DOI: 10.4324/9781315765976-1

Introduction

In first thinking about this book, and then in writing this chapter, I am attempting to set out a road map to reconceptualise our understanding of what have come to be known in the academic literature as ‘gated communities’. I lay out a template designed to explore the notion of the gated community as an identifiable transnational connector space, in the same way some boutique hotel brands are a sign of privilege for global travellers.

The chapter illustrates how conflict, particularly urban conflict, has been a key driver in promoting aspects of fortification in the built environment that has subsequently led to the militarisation and fragmentation of urban space. The chapter suggests that the debates around aspects of fortification and militarisation in the built environment should shift from a focus on ‘gated communities’ to one on ‘urban gating’, i.e. a shift from the familiar notion of the hard edges of the self-contained gated community to the more fluid, sometimes softer boundaries and a generic notion of urban gating in the landscape. This discussion is driven by Sassen’s argument outlined in Bagaeen and Uduku (2010) that gated communities – as they have been built and conceived of in large urban areas over the last 20 years – are but one of a range of instances of urban gating; one phase in a long history across time and space.

Especially in the case of the gated communities of the rich and the privileged, we may well have missed the fact of the growing cross-border interactions among these increasingly global elites – not only through their workplaces, but also increasingly, perhaps, through their family and social lives. Sardar (in Bagaeen and Uduku 2010) suggests an alternative view that takes on board these particularities, noting that ‘the gated community is a microcosm, a metaphor for the ideology and interlocking relationships, global in extent’ (2010: 9). In fact, this position reinforces Sassen’s view and would mean accepting that such elite gated communities are increasingly part of what she has called the ‘geographies of centrality’ that connect the power centres of the world and cut across the old North–South divide – leaving behind ‘geographies of marginality’, both of which ‘gate’. What this means, as I will demonstrate here, is that the poor also build gates.

Following the publication of Gated Communities (Bagaeen and Uduku 2010) we were left with a nagging question: is ‘gated’ really the most appropriate term to conceptualise such global processes of (self-)segregation, exclusion and territorialisation? Or, is there merit in adopting Sassen’s more generic notion of ‘urban gating’? The contribution of that first book to this field of knowledge lay in examining how, historically, cultures and traditions have managed the public and the private, both as systems of values and responses to these in the built environment. This was an important question at the time because as we looked at different countries where the phenomenon of the gated community was present, we found different drivers. As a residential form, we also discovered it provided the new elites (such as those in China) with enough autonomy to participate in the market while asking them to participate in legitimating the regime.

In order, therefore, to now attempt some kind of reconceptualisation, this chapter takes on a pensive and sometimes reflective mode. It is divided into several key parts, the first of which facilitates a clearer definition of the issues and drivers that have propelled urban security to the fore. The second looks at the implications of ‘security’ and ‘conflict’ in urban areas. A brief examination of the current debates and writings around gated communities precedes those parts of the chapter that seek to lend credence to an alternative view set around ideas of ‘urban gating’. These ideas will coalesce as the reader ploughs on through the many interesting chapters that make up this book.

Conflict and fortification in the urban environment

Priest (2011) argues that conflict is inherent in society and is better understood as a transformative process by which opposing ideas and visions are voiced; and root causes of major social problems, inequalities or injustices, are challenged. For Piquard and Swenarton (2011: 2) conflict is an ‘event that interrupts and disrupts normality’. Gated communities have been described as divisive and fragmentary; as demonstrated elsewhere in this book, they can arise either out of necessity or tradition, and under certain processes – socio-economic, political, or other. They can belong to what Soffer and Minghi (1986: 29) describe as a ‘security landscape’ that is the ‘result of the necessity to defend a territory’ (Figure 1.1). Calthorpe (1993: 137), in a discussion on American gated communities, wrote that

physically, the gated community denotes the separation, and sadly the fear, that has become the subtext of a country once founded on differences and tolerance. Politically, it expresses the desire to privatise, cutting back the responsibilities of government to provide services for all … Socially, the fortress represents a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more isolated people become, and the less they share with others unlike themselves, the more they fear.

This is an argument that Sassen returns to in the fourth edition of Cities in a World Economy (2012); and in Chapter 9 of this volume Sassen highlights ‘the sharpening distance between the extremes evident in all major cities of developed countries’ (2012: 325).

Figure 1.1Housing at Ma'ale Adumim, Jerusalem.

Source: author.

The power to zone and regulate the use of space in urbanised societies extends from a legitimation of that power in the interest of the health, safety and welfare of the public. Brunn et al. (2000: 68) highlight the particular nature of security devices as landscape features that do not happen by accident but are the ‘conscious decisions of governing or corporate leaders [who] wish to exercise power or wish to encourage and persuade others, through propaganda, advertising or even fear to construct elements of a defence landscape’. According to the same authors (2000: 71), the most apparent and observed elements in these landscapes are walls, fences and gates, all of which may be used to enclose individual residences, apartment complexes or entire communities (see Figure 1.2 and Figure 1.3).

Figure 1.3San Borja, Lima.

Source: author.

Figure 1.2York Terrace West, London.

Source: author.

Shirlow (2000: 85) suggests that ‘in arenas of violent conflict, the control of territory is usually achieved through dominating social contact, iconographies of devotion and political aspirations’. More recently, Piquard and Swenarton (2011: 4) link this process to innovation; they note that from Vitruvius onwards, the fortification of towns and settlements ‘has been considered integral to the work of the architect and the need for defensive fortifications has often acted as a spur to architectural invention’. Phillips (2000: 134) described private communities as ‘landscapes of defence’ and noted that ‘many private communities have locational and architectural features that are highly reminiscent of the defensive features of a fortress’. Brunn et al. (2000: 73) note how a state can send various messages to those wishing to enter its spaces through architecture, colour, degree of openness, single or multiple checkpoints, and the friendliness (or otherwise) of its uniformed personnel – including whether they carry weapons.

There are, of course, various degrees of fortification in the urban landscape. The sight of the military in border areas conveys the special security character of these areas. What can be different is the visibility of the military, and especially that of soldiers in uniform, carrying weapons in otherwise civilian contexts. In a study of Israeli securityscapes, Azaryahu (2000) argues that the most notable ones are military landscapes – especially the army camps that adorn the Israeli landscape. The architecture of military camps combines military functions with notions of discipline and authority. Signs on perimeter fences indicate that these enclaves are subject to a set of rules different from the ordinary ‘civilian’ code. He explains how ‘fortified gates stress that these are restricted areas, inaccessible to unauthorised persons. Photography is prohibited, which enhances the sense of secrecy with which such secluded areas are shrouded’ (2000: 106). Prior to this observation, Soffer and Minghi (1986) highlighted the link between a war’s physical-climatic background and the establishment of borders.

In Israel, where the idea of the settlement as a protected space still prevails, the building of fences was reintroduced in the late 1960s following a new wave of attacks on Israeli settlements along the Jordanian, and later the Lebanese, borders. This produced a typical picture: the kibbutz surrounded by barbed wire, locked at night, and with an armed patrol always on duty (Baignet and Leigh 1991: 27). Fences, with a guarded gate to control movements in and out of the settlement area – especially ones that are small and isolated – also encircle Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories. An equally important function of the fence in these cases is to mark land claims, and the building of such a fence tends to be an occasion for a clash with the settlement’s Arab neighbours. The fence, of course, underlines the existence of the settlement as an enclave in a hostile environment. This is an image very similar to that of the gated community built out of fear of the ‘other’, and borne out of the same fear that allows for security personnel being positioned at entrances to cinemas and shopping centres, and at the gates of schools, to check the bags of people and to patrol their surroundings. Highly sensitive military and government intelligence spaces (Figure 1.4) may feature multiple entry checkpoints, voice pattern and face-scanning identification mechanisms, and approved authorisation protocols.

Figure 1.4The American embassy, Lima.

Source: author.

An apt description of security in gated communities is given by Brunn et al. (2000: 76). They note how armed security guards often stand at elaborate entrance gates or gatehouses that signal symbols of power, control, wealth, privacy and protection. Outsiders and unwelcome visitors are, ‘it is hoped’, deterred by elaborate security systems, concrete barricades, walls within walls, the requirement to show security documentation, and walls or fences that from the outside serve as sharp social class and economic dividers. The authors also point out that not everyone resides in ‘gilded ghettos or exclusive and expensive subdivisions’ (2000: 73). The desire for privacy may simply be reflected in the use of ‘no trespassing’ signs, or the placement of flower pots and low-growing or eye-level shrubberies, as illustrated in Figure 1.5.

Figure 1.5Housing at Gun Wharf Quays, Portsmouth.

Source: author.

The militarisati...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• Foreword: Gating as a variable by Saskia Sassen
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Beyond gated communities: urban gating, soft boundaries and networks of influence and affluence
• 2 Gated communities in a changing geopolitical landscape: an exploratory genealogy of Occupy London
• 3 Gating in urban Johannesburg: digging inside the social and political systems of a golf estate and an open suburb Federica Duca
• 4 Gated communities in South Korea and the dilemma of the state
• 5 Urban gating in Thailand: the new debates
• 6 Gating in urban Ireland
• 7 Gating in the Western Cape, South Africa: post-apartheid planning and environmental agency
• 8 Beyond gating: condo-ism as a way of urban life
• 9 Urban gating in Israel: home gating practices on kibbutzim and moshavim
• 10 Urban gating in Puebla, Mexico: an SOS for world solidarity and citizen empowerment
• 11 Gating in South Africa: a gated community is a tree; a city is not
• 12 Urban gating in Chile: Chuquicamata – a corporate mining town: ‘bounded territory within a territory’
• Index