What is a gated community and does it have to have gates?
What is a Gated Community and does it have to have gates? Discuss.
This essay reviews the literature drawn upon and clarifies what it means by community. A full discussion is offered of what a gated community is and whether their associated gates are physical, psychological or simply visual barriers to outsiders and are GC defined by these gates? In order to further explore these issues, this essay invites theories and concepts such as Weber’s life chances, Cohen’s moral panic and Durkheim’s collective conscience to inform the discussion and goes on to explore whether GC is a relatively new label for what is already evident in society in ghettoes, tower blocks and no go areas etc., with the gates, merely physical symbols of control and choice or are they a relatively modern, stand-alone type of housing with a specific purpose, distinctive from other housing merely by their gates.
The village of Silver End, Essex, UK, is used as an example, not commonly thought of as a GC, but having similar attributes, alongside the GC of Bow Quarter in East London, UK a recognised GC, expanding the question into asking, what actually differentiates these communities? Could it be life chances and the choice of housing and environment, rather than physical and visual barriers such as gates? Or is a GC, simply about gates, symbolically or literally? The conclusion weighs up the arguments, examples and discussion in an attempt to conclude, what is a GC? And does it have to have gates?
LITERATURE REVIEW
Community is a diverse, changing and a continually contested concept, generally meaning a group of people with something in common, for example, political, religious, cultural or geographic commonalities such as sharing the same religion or living in the same area, summed up as “The idea of community is one where we seek to be with like-minded people or those with whom we share a common identity” (Bauman (2000) cited in Mooney & Talbot (2010) p.60). A GC is a group
This essay reviews the literature drawn upon and clarifies what it means by community. A full discussion is offered of what a gated community is and whether their associated gates are physical, psychological or simply visual barriers to outsiders and are GC defined by these gates? In order to further explore these issues, this essay invites theories and concepts such as Weber’s life chances, Cohen’s moral panic and Durkheim’s collective conscience to inform the discussion and goes on to explore whether GC is a relatively new label for what is already evident in society in ghettoes, tower blocks and no go areas etc., with the gates, merely physical symbols of control and choice or are they a relatively modern, stand-alone type of housing with a specific purpose, distinctive from other housing merely by their gates.
The village of Silver End, Essex, UK, is used as an example, not commonly thought of as a GC, but having similar attributes, alongside the GC of Bow Quarter in East London, UK a recognised GC, expanding the question into asking, what actually differentiates these communities? Could it be life chances and the choice of housing and environment, rather than physical and visual barriers such as gates? Or is a GC, simply about gates, symbolically or literally? The conclusion weighs up the arguments, examples and discussion in an attempt to conclude, what is a GC? And does it have to have gates?
LITERATURE REVIEW
Community is a diverse, changing and a continually contested concept, generally meaning a group of people with something in common, for example, political, religious, cultural or geographic commonalities such as sharing the same religion or living in the same area, summed up as “The idea of community is one where we seek to be with like-minded people or those with whom we share a common identity” (Bauman (2000) cited in Mooney & Talbot (2010) p.60). A GC is a group
References: http://www.academia.edu/316535/Gated_Communities_A_Systematic_Review_of_the_Research_Evidence (Accessed 21st April 2013) Bow Quarter, (n.d.) [online] available at: http://www.thebowquarter.co.uk/pages/bowquarter.htm (accessed 21st April 2013) Cadburys the story, (n.d.) [online] available at: http://www.cadbury.co.uk/the-story#1800-1850 (Accessed 13th January) 2013) International Foundation for Protection Officers, (n.d.) [online] Available at: http://www.ifpo.org/articlebank/gatedcommunity.html (accessed: 13th January 2013) King, S, (n.d.) [online] Silver End a place to work and play, available at: http://www.silverend.org/history/susan.htm (Accessed 15th April 2013) Koonings, K and Krujit, D (2007) ‘Fractured cities, second class citizenship and urban violence’ in Koonings, K. and Kruijt, D. (eds) (2007) Fractured Cities, London, Zed. Low, S Mooney G, Talbot, D (2010), Global cities, segregation and transgression, Muncie, J., Talbot, D. and Walters, R. (eds.), Crime: Local and Global, Milton Keynes, The open University.