page_title: Gated community
section_title: Criticism
hierarchical_section_title: Gated community / Criticism
caption_attribution_description: English: Entrance to the Retreat at Twin Lakes, a gated community in Sanford, Florida.
context_page_description: In its modern form, 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. Similar walls and gates have separated quarters of some cities for centuries. 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.
  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.
context_section_description: Proponents of gated communities (and to a lesser degree, of cul-de-sac) 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. 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 neighborhoods.
  A commentary in The New York Times specifically blames the gated communities for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin as the columnist states that "gated communities churn a vicious cycle by attracting like-minded residents who seek shelter from outsiders and whose physical seclusion then worsens paranoid groupthink against outsiders."
  In an influential 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 (2014) had investigated the effect of gated communities on individual's risk of burglary victimization in South Africa. Results shown 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.
caption: The Retreat at Twin Lakes is the location of the shooting of Trayvon Martin.
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