Between walls and fences: How different types of gated communities shape the streets around them

Abstract

Gated communities in Latin American cities have become the new normal. The streets bordered by fences, walls and the occasional gate, formed when two or more gated communities face each other, dominate the urban landscape today. Taking Bogotá with its 3500 gated communities as my case study, I create a novel typology focusing on the gated community’s spatial dimension, not portraying it as an isolated island but as an integral part of the urban realm. Using an empirically grounded typology formation process, I present five distinctive types of gated communities in Bogotá, varying widely in how they shape the surrounding public spaces. Some types have significant expected negative effects on activity and security in the adjacent streets and others hardly any. I show how future gated community research and policymaking would benefit from disaggregation of the concept and present some policy strategies to mitigate negative external effects of gated communities.