Behind The Gates. . .

Behind The Gates, Life, Security, and The Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America; Setha Low has done her research to find out what is the gated community and tries to find out answer or the truth about the social segregation come out from GC development. In order to achieve her goals, she has used a method like interviews, observations, which are basically through photo documentation and participatory observation since she also lived in GC.

According to Setha Low, through her book, "Behind The Gates", there were some discussion about the residents that living in gated community make a sense of their lives behind gates and walls, as well as the social consequences of their residential choices. Her point of view that gated community was intensifying the social segregation, racism, and raises a number of values conflict for residents.

"Living in a gated development contributes to resident's sense of well-being, but comes at the price of maintaining private guards and gates as well as conforming to extensive homeowners' association rules and regulations. Individual freedom and ease of access for residents must be limited in order to achieve greater privacy and social control for the community as a whole".

(Low, Setha)

In her study through interviews method, she found out that the residents inside gated community are not friendly, as in they are not well-communicating and interacting through each other.

Conc: Gated community can erode a neighborhood ties and people living inside gated community become selfish, stuck of mentalities and anti-social behavior. Moreover, gates send an unwelcoming message and and more worse, gates break up the neighborhoods.

"I live in gated rental community and it seems that everything is pretty nice and the management is ok. But I long for the sense of community, where people can have chances to interact with each other, but here everybody just doesn't talk to the neighbors that much. Gated communities are such significant phenomena in South Florida and I was so surprised to see that many when i moved here, which even triggered my research interests to find out whether the only purpose of the gates is to keep the alligators out (a friend's joke). Social isolation is so significant here and maybe gates do mean something about the status of class..." - quote from resident living in GC


(source : City-Data.com)

However, Gated Communities do have their advantages such as :

• No through traffic. The neighborhood is safer for children.
• Gated communities can be safer from crime.
• Home owners have private and exclusive access to sites.
• Property values in large gated communities show a better resistance to market fluctuations.
• Provides the public authorities with wealthy taxpayers, at no cost.
• The development can assist the social, environmental and economic regeneration of a neglected and run-down inner city district of abandoned factories and decaying homes.