Gated communities

Gated communities is an American term which indicates " districts whose access is controlled, and in which public space (streets, pavements, parks, playing fields…) is privatisé". The access is allowed by it to the residents and their guests.

Approximately 8 million Americans would reside at it. Real phenomenon initially reserved for fortunate pensioners, these enclosed residential districts make from now on followers within the active middle-classes. One finds some even in the underprivileged zones of the large metropolises of the United States.

One finds in different dimensions these closed districts, made safe, kept by armed men, in the whole world, in particular in the countries of the South: of Johannesburg to Sao Paulo, while passing by Nairobi or La Paz.

Principal logics of enfermement residential are the security, the research of between-oneself and the political power of these residences. Some gated communities in the USA made secession with their municipalities, by creating their clean private Ville in order to provide the best public services to their residents.

Such “made safe” spaces, where in any case closed, also exist in France and would even currently be under development, especially with the rise to power of the question of the insecurity. Such districts exist thus with Toulouse.

However, the term of Gated Communities is not applicable to the French context because there does not exist truly of logics communautarists within these residences, but rather a real will of security (to enclose guarantees the price of land).

This type of district practices a voluntary segregation, a withdrawal of the company. It is partly what their detractors reproach them.

See too

private City

External bonds

international Network of research on the gated communities and the private urban governorship
Thesis on the subject, by Renaud Goix, geographer

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