Gated Communities – Outline of synthesis

INTRODUCTION :

Increasing gap between rich and poor
Growing insecurity
-> The Haves found a solution : Gated Communities : -> Small or large completely private " town " -> Controled access by private police -> Fences surrounding the community (barbed wire or high wall) -> Very expensive flat or houses (between 750.000 to 2 million $)

1 American on 6 lives in a gated community. (22 millions)
-> A widenning trend

1) Advantages

This trend tend to become worldwide spread due to the increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots. There's many advantages :
- A safer lifestyle (Everybody coming into the community is monitorised, everybody knows everybody)
- Safe property ( No burglars can trespass)
- Good investment (No problem to sell back your house, there's more purchaser than house available)
- Urban regeneration ( It bring back the higher income into spaces they previously avoid, bringing money)
- Sense of responsibility ( Nobody in Gated communities depend on Welfare, everybody's work for itself and is responsible of what he or she become)

2) Drawbacks

If gated communities could have many advantages for the Haves and even for some others, it create many problems :

- Social fragmentation (On one side there's the rich, on the other side, the poor and between them, a high wall or barbed wires, it's completely anti-social and exclusionary)
- Paranoïa (Gated communities houseowner tend to imagine more and more threat that could endanger their perfect paradise)
- Envy (Those communities create envy, jalousy from the less gifted ones)
- Imbalance rich / poor (It tend also to help the rich to become richer and to make the middle and the lower classe decline more and more)
- Aggresive isolationism ( Many communities tend not only to rely only on themselves and to let others with their problems -even in the gated community itself- )
- What a paradise behind barbed wires!

Conclusion :