Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 9.39
Gated Housing Community out-
side Guangzhou, China.
© Alexander
B. Murphy.
with controlled access gates for people and automobiles.
Often, gated communities have security cameras and
security forces (privatized police) keeping watch over the
community, as the main objective of a gated community
is to create a space of safety within the uncertain urban
world. A secondary objective is to maintain or increase
housing values in the neighborhood through enforcement
of the neighborhood association's bylaws that control
everything from the color of a house to the character and
size of additions.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, developers in
the United States began building gated communities in
urban areas around the country. In a 2001 census of hous-
ing, the United States government reported that 16 mil-
lion people, or about 6 percent of Americans, live in gated
communities. The urban design of gating communities
has diffused around the globe at record speed, with gated
communities in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
In poorer countries, where cities are divided
between wealthy and poor, gated communities provide
another layer of comfort for the city's wealthy. In the large
cities of Latin America and Africa, you commonly see
walls around individual houses, walling in yards and pools
and keeping out crime. During the last ten years, many
neighborhoods in these cities have added gates around
the neighborhoods in addition to the walls. Walled houses
and gated communities in the wealthy northern suburbs
of Johannesburg, South Africa, are threatening the deseg-
regation of the post-Apartheid city. White, wealthy resi-
dents fear crime in the city with a murder rate, along with
neighboring Pretoria, of 5000 per year (in an area with
about 5 million people). In response to their fear of crime,
people in the suburbs of Johannesburg blocked off over
2500 streets and posted guards to control access to these
streets by 2004. Many fear that the gated communities are
a new form of segregation. Since the vast majority of
the crimes in the city occur in poor black townships or
in the central city, the concern is that these developments
only worsen the plight of less well-off segments of society.
In China, gated communities have taken off, now
crossing socioeconomic classes and creating a ubiquitous
feature on the urban landscape (Fig. 9.39). Like the gated
communities in Europe and North America, the gated
communities of China privatize spaces and exclude out-
siders with gates, security cameras, and restricted access.
However, the gated communities in China are fi ve to ten
times more densely populated than gated communities in
Europe and North America. Geographer Youqin Huang
has found other differences between gated communities
in China and those in North America and Europe. China
has a long history of gated communities, dating back to
the fi rst Chinese cities and persisting since. Huang argues
that the “collectivism-oriented culture and tight political
control” in China explain why the Chinese government
built gated communities during the socialist period and
why a proliferation of gated communities has occurred by
private developers since China's housing reform in 1998
promoted individual home ownership.
