Gated Communities In The United States Summary
When a person hears the word gate, they commonly envision thoughts of safety, protection, and privacy. However, in the essay “Divided We Fall: Gated and Walled Communities in the United States,” Edward J. Blakely and Mary Gail Snyder address the controversy of gated communities by introducing gates as dreadful, restrictive, and exclusive. The statement they make is that gated communities are ruining our nation by creating seclusive communities where the people within never interact with people outside their gates. While that can happen, it is not nearly as extreme as described and is typically untrue. In fact, most of their essay uses ideas that are false, feeble evidence to back up their reasoning, and they reverse sides in the middle of their
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The most prominent examples are the visuals that are shown on several pages. The first visual is used to show the concentration of gated communities in 1996 (2). However, it is an ineffective visual because there are only seven “high concentration” (2) dots in the United States. This fails to bring their point across and greatly weakens their argument. The second visual is a set of pictures- one is a picture of a lifestyle community, one is an elite community, and the other is a security zone (6). Through these pictures, they are attempting to show the comparisons between the three with the gates. However, the communities are nice houses with beautiful landscaping, and instead of looking uninviting, because of the gate, they look very appealing. A third example that weakened their argument was a response they received from a resident of a gated community. Their response when asked questions about their gated community was this: “It is just like any other place” (7). This is not a quote an author should include when trying to convince people of the dangers and detrimental consequences of gated communities. Altogether, their evidence was “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” Their reasoning was already questionable, but when supported with evidence that went against their reasoning, their argument thoroughly
The most prominent examples are the visuals that are shown on several pages. The first visual is used to show the concentration of gated communities in 1996 (2). However, it is an ineffective visual because there are only seven “high concentration” (2) dots in the United States. This fails to bring their point across and greatly weakens their argument. The second visual is a set of pictures- one is a picture of a lifestyle community, one is an elite community, and the other is a security zone (6). Through these pictures, they are attempting to show the comparisons between the three with the gates. However, the communities are nice houses with beautiful landscaping, and instead of looking uninviting, because of the gate, they look very appealing. A third example that weakened their argument was a response they received from a resident of a gated community. Their response when asked questions about their gated community was this: “It is just like any other place” (7). This is not a quote an author should include when trying to convince people of the dangers and detrimental consequences of gated communities. Altogether, their evidence was “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” Their reasoning was already questionable, but when supported with evidence that went against their reasoning, their argument thoroughly