Project Abstract :

    Gated communities, which are walled and gated residential neighborhoods, have become a common feature within the US metropolitan areas. Because security features and 24h guarded gates prevent from public access, these neighborhoods represent a new form of urbanism where public space is being privatized. In the most recently urbanized areas, especially in the fast growing cities of the Southern and Western states, they represent up to 30% of the new homes market: they have thus become one of the symbols of the metropolitan fragmentation and of the increase of social segregation. They not only build an enclosure but they also operate a selection of residents, through Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions. Finally, because they are managed as private corporations, and pushing for political and fiscal independence, they are leading to a project of partition that stresses social segregation. They indeed produce not only a physical discontinuity, but also a social discontinuity within the city.

     The project of the Thesis addresses the spatial discontinuity between the gated communities and their vicinities, which is produced by the social enclosure. This discontinuity will be discussed as the specificity of the communities compared to the neighboring areas, through a study of the impact of gated communities over social, ethnic and property values patterns. This impact will also be assessed through the relevant political and legal issues. As part of the metropolitan area, we will assess the integration of these developments within the city, considering their new urban life-style. Finally, because the gated communities are leading to a privatization of public space, the study of those enclaves must be done within the broader reflection regarding the contemporary evolution of cities, especially the transformation of social patterns and urban patterns (polycentrism) produced by a generalized urban sprawl. Although some scholar work has already been done about this kind of developments, especially in Southern America, there has been so far no investigation of gated communities in the US, from a geographical point of view. The literature has mainly focused on social issues and psychology, such as the way gated communities impact the social relations.

     As a consequence, the study is being developed in three main steps. First of all, a definition of gated communities is proposed, describing them as mainly suburban real-estate products, building communities designed like theme parks. In a second part, the consequences of the fading boundaries between public and private management are discussed. Gated Communities are taking part to a trend of local political secessions, in order to protect oneís investment. At last, we assess the level of discontinuity produced by those secessionist neighborhoods.
Although researches are mainly focused on Los Angeles and its surrounding areas, some examples will also refer to New York, Orlando, San Francisco or Washington. Los Angeles indeed offers an interesting set of study, because of the high concentration of these developments in fast growing cities.

1. ìWelcome to Dreamlandî: the enclosure as a real estate suburban product, for communities designed like residential theme parks.
    The gated communityís life-style is mainly inspired by the historical golden-ghettos found in many industrial-era cities, such as New York, Chicago or even London and Paris (such as Saint-Cloudís enclaves, Bel Air in Los Angeles, or Llewellyn Park a New York). Nevertheless, those enclaves are now mainly suburban neighborhoods for upper and upper-middle class, emphasizing on a ìcommunity life-styleî. The promotion of those real-estate industry highly standardized products always focuses on leisure facilities and amenities, such as golf courses, private beaches, private parks and horse-riding trails (and even in one case in Nevada a private shooting-range). Because they are focused on life-style and leisure, they may be compared to a theme park, ó which are often to be considered as the main architectural references of these developments, through ìnew urbanismî standardsó. Although the main function would be residential, the homeowner fees always include the payment of the common leisure facilities.
    Making an evaluation of this specific real-estate market must take into account the different kind of gated communities: golden ghettos, life-style communities and now several low-end and poor neighborhoods retrofitted with gates to promote their safety and control gang activities (although well publicized, there are only two of them in Los Angeles). Nevertheless, the demand for gated enclaves seems to be raising and increasingly diversified: our database of the Los Angeles area gated communities now contains more than 250 gated communities, housing more than 1,5% of the inhabitants. If the biggest gated communities host more than 15 000 inhabitants, a lot of middle-size developments only have 200 or 500 dwelling units. They are highly standardized developments built by transnational corporations (such as Kaufman & Broad or Lennar Homes) or local monopolistic land-owners (such as the Irvine Corporation in Orange County).  Homesí prices also contributes to this diversity, while prices are ranking from 90,000 US$ to several millions, depending on the location and the type of neighborhood.
    Two questions have to be raised. First, the locations of gated communities, guided by the preferences for a site and situation, have all in common the fact they all belong to the urban edge. Then, the reasons for choosing a house within a gated community are both dealing with personal security issues, but also with a willing to get a social status. Living in a gated community is clearly associated with some kind of ìsnob valueî, which is not far away from the main goal of those enclaves: protecting the investment through a private management of the city.
 

2. Fading boundaries between public and private management. Urban secession as a trend ; protection of the investment as a goal.
        Gated Communities are leading to a system of private governance of cities, through a homeowners associations which are becoming local political influent actors.
        A first juridical aspect is that the CC&Rís are leading to social homogeneity of the community. There may be age requirements, such as in retirement communities where residents must be 55 or older. And if ethnic requirements are not allowed since the civil rights laws, some design guidelines for houses are leading to a social selection of residents.
Actually, the ambiguity between the residential development and the political meaning of those neighborhoods shall be understood through the double meaning of the word ìcommunityî. Although it refers to the identity level (religion, ethnic origin, etc.), it actually often gets confused with the political level (especially the municipality). The community is a social force, which is politically involved because it gathers people who have basically the same interests.
        Such confusion is especially relevant to understand the nature of the territories built by gated communities, when considering the incorporation of gated enclaves as new municipalities. Large gated communities of more than 10,000 inhabitants, used their specificity (such as Leisure World, a retirement community in Orange County, or Canyon Lake, in Riverside County) to claim for their incorporation as cities, and to build private municipalities where taxes are supposed to be lower than in unincorporated areas. Local affairs are shared between a private homeowners association, in charge of road maintenance, security and compliance of buildings with land use and CC&Rís, and a minimal city, which contracts for its public services (water and Fire Department) with different public agencies. In the Los Angeles area, about 10 gated communities of importance have been involved with this kind of incorporation and urban secession within the last 40 years.
        Finally, a few gated communities eventually asked for tax rebates and exceptions. In fact, they consider the money they give for homeowners Associations and community spending must not be paid for county or city services.
 In this political and fiscal context, the homeowner associations are becoming public actors, where as city governance is more and more privatized. Impacting the tax base, deciding for their own planning, gated communities finally prevent from further in-fill development, and over all protect their property values through time.
 

3. From the enclosure to the discontinuity: Enclaves for whom? Against what?

     Considering this confusion between public and private affairs, gated communities are building some really specific territories. Indeed, they produce not only a physical discontinuity, but also a social discontinuity within the city.
As residential neighborhoods, they are part of the main framework of social and ethnic segregation within the metropolitan area. For example, Gated Communities are located both in the poorest and the richest areas of Los Angeles, and both in WASP dominant areas as well as in some Asian or Hispanic neighborhoods, which is consistent with the diversity of gated communities, designed for each segment of market.
In this context, the enclosure must be understood according to its ideological aspects (the IVth amendment). More than a response to crime (or response to fear), the wall has many advantages for residents: less traffic, no door-to-door sellers, security for kids... As a consequence the wall acts as an ìin fill protectionî: it protects both the neighborhood and the value of the houses. Real estate professionals usually estimate that the value inside walls is up to 10% the value of the same house outside walls. We must then consider the interest for gated communities as a way to protect oneís money and investment. The nature of the enclosure, which is produced, will be discussed in the Thesis as the specificity of the communities compared to the neighboring areas, through a study of property values (both assessed values and real-estate values). In a second step, the main goal of the study is to describe the discontinuity level with the neighboring areas, using 1990 and 2000 census data (median income, professional occupation, race and origins) at the Census Tract and Census Block Group scales. Those data, as well as the location and main characteristics of more than 200 gated communities in Southern California (collected in realtor files and on road maps), have already been implemented into a database (Geographic Information System) during the past two years of research.
        The first results show that gated communities are building specific areas where property values are different and more homogeneous than in their vicinities. Gated enclaves, through the private-contract governance, contribute to protect the real-instate investment from market fluctuations. For instance, in Los Angeles, property values in large gated communities have shown a better resistance during the 1992-1996 real market crisis than in regular residential neighboring areas. Furthermore, it appears that those high discrepancies in the market price variations are not explained by specific social patterns of gated communities compared to their neighborhood. Actually, those discrepancies are to be explained first by the added value of the enclosure and also by the externalities that gated communities are producing on their surrounding areas, such as tax inequities and redistribution of crime.

 Finally, as part of a metropolitan area, we will have to assess the integration of these developments within the city, considering their new urban lifestyle. As the juridical and political construction of gated communities clearly points out, the privatization of structures are of influence over the issues of metropolitan fragmentation.  The issues gated communities are addressing finally belong to the main problems of urban fragmentation and polycentrism, urban sprawl and urban governance that every metropolitan areas (in the US, in EuropeÖ) have to deal with. ó R. LE GOIX 2001.
 

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