ancient cities

Buder, Stanley. 1990. Visionaries and Planners: The
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Christensen, Carol Ann. 1986. The American Garden
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University of Michigan Press.
Hall, Peter. 2002. Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual
History of Urban Planning and Design in the
Twentieth Century. 3rd ed. New York: Wiley-Hall.
Hertzen, Heikki von and Paul D. Spreiregen. 1973.
Building a New Town: Finland’s New Garden City,
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Howard, Ebenezer. 1898. Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to
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———. 1902. Garden Cities of Tomorrow. London:
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Ward, Stephen V., ed. 1992. Garden City: Past, Present,
Future. London: Taylor and Francis.
Ga t e d Co m m u n i t y
Privatized spaces have become an increasingly
dominant urban trend over the past 30 years,
radically altering the use of space in the city as
well as the nature of urban society. From Los
Angeles to Rio de Janeiro and Johannesburg, an
archetype of militarized space, with electrified
fences, impenetrable walls, and armed security
guards, has developed, protecting and securing
residential, commercial, and corporate zones from
the dangerous outside world. Concurrently, the
label gated community has gained popularity in
academic, policy, and popular discourse, employed
to describe and critique this urban trend, although
the historical roots and regional variations of the
phenomenon are far older and broader than the
American label suggests.
Definitions
Gated communities are traditionally defined by
their physical attributes: a perimeter enclosure (e.g.,
electrified fence, wall), surveillance (e.g., CCTV,
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security patrols), and access control (e.g., boomgate,
security gatehouse). In other words, gated
communities inhabit spaces that are closely
restricted, monitored, and controlled; they are
reserved exclusively for residents and their appointed
guests, with no access for uninvited outsiders. In
reality, the term is applied to a wide range of territorial
strategies, from total security estates (residential
or commercial) with electrified high walls and
permanently patrolling security guards, sometimes
including schools, shops, and social clubs within
the walls, to sectional title developments, apartment
blocks with a keypad entry system, and everything
in between. In addition, recent analyses of gated
communities emphasize definitions based on the
private and/or collective governance mechanisms
that control these spaces, rather than the physical
presence of gates or walls per se. However, the form
of gated community predominantly imagined and
implied by commentators is that of a cluster of
residential homes, surrounded by walls and protected
by private security of some form (although
these inevitably also rely on communal governance
mechanisms, such as homeowner associations, the
latter are not a primary defining feature).
The Global Rise of Gated Communities
Explanations for the rise of gated communities differ
significantly according to local and regional
contexts, but factors such as rising violent crime and
decreased confidence in public security are common
rationalizations. The global rise of gated communities
is often understood as a distinctly American
trend, spreading from U.S. middle-class suburban
enclaves and urban ethnic securitized ghettos to
cities throughout the world. However, the concept
and practice of urban gating has a much longer and
wider history and is subject to regional variations.
For example, in the medieval era, entire cities
were walled off; in the context of nineteenth-century
European industrialization, the wealthy elite
increasingly deserted run-down city centers in favor
of private residential zones on the urban edge; and
historical examples of the sixteenth-century
Venetian ghetto and thirteenth-century béguinages
in European cities demonstrate gated community
principles of social exclusion via physical barriers.
While the contemporary trend toward gated communities
has spread fastest in the United States and
Latin America, gated communities are not merely