Canyon Lake, California is a city of 11,000 people in Riverside County, about
70 miles southeast of downtown LA. It's a nice-looking community surrounding a
lake, and it features parks, beaches, a marina, and a golf course. And like any
city it has a City Council, Fire Department, Police Department and all the
other basic municipal services. But you can't go there. You're not allowed in.
It's almost entirely gated. The only part that isn't gated is a shopping center
across the street from the main gate. They'll let you spend your money in
Canyon Lake but don't go near their residential amenities. An entire gated
city is a bit rare, but gated communities are common. Millions of Americans live in
tens of thousands of gated communities. New ones are built all the time, but why
are they so popular? And are they good for our cities?
so let's put a definition out there. What are gated communities exactly? They are private communities that
restrict access using gates, walls, landscaping, or other barriers.
Security may be provided by guards or keycard access. Canyon link is protected by some
fences here and there but the gates at its three entrances provide the greatest
level of security.Gated communities first appeared in Sun Belt cities as
retirement communities but gained popularity in the 1980s as people feared
urban crime in the Reagan era. Today they can be found in all regions of the US
and are common and popular abroad as well. People generally choose to live in
gated communities for three reasons: lifestyle, prestige, and safety. A
lifestyle community might be your typical country club or retirement
community. People choose these gated communities to be surrounded by
like-minded people at the exclusion of all others. A prestige community is all
about exclusivity. Living in the neighborhood is a status symbol and the
gates are sure that the supply of homes is low and fixed. A safety community uses
gates and walls to keep out dangerous crime and traffic. The actual crime rate
doesn't usually matter as crime in the US has been dropping for decades and
gated communities are as popular as ever. In countries and cities where crime is
truly high these communities are very popular for those who can afford it.
People may move into a gated community for a combination of reasons. A celebrity
may like a gated community for the prestige but also for the safety and
privacy the gates provide. The benefits they offer have definitely
fueled their construction but many local governments also encourage them. Why?
It's all about the money. Gated communities are one type of private communities, what
the law calls common interest communities or common interest
developments. I'll be referring to them as CICS in this video. These are places
where residents own their property but also own property or amenities in common,
such as parks, pools, or a clubhouse. Housing co-ops are a form of CIC, just in the
urban environment because every resident owns their unit, but the rest of the
building is owned in common. If you pay money to a homeowners association you
live in a common interest community. Those fees go to paying for the upkeep
of those shared amenities. Just a quick aside but you can easily tell if a
community is private on Google Maps by trying to use the Street View tool.
Street View cars won't go into private communities, so you can get a quick map
of what's public and what's not. In most CICs, infrastructure like streets and
stormwater systems are also private. The streets are private so they can deny
access to people who aren't supposed to be there because hey it's private
property. But it also means those roads aren't the
city's responsibility to maintain. Residents of common interest communities
don't get a discount in their taxes even though the local government provides
them with fewer services. Residents pay full taxes and HOA fees to maintain the
private property. This may seem like a bad deal from the point of view of a
resident but it's a great deal for the local government. The local government
gets all that tax money they don't have to repave roads, plow snow, unclog storm
drains, and maintain parks. In the largest gated communities, the HOA can act like a
second government residents pay taxes to. In Hot Springs Village, Arkansas, the
largest gated community in the US, the property owners association has a staff
of about 475 in departments that sound a lot like a real city: Public Works,
Planning, Public Safety, and Golf??? That's all work that the local
government doesn't have to be doing. There's another unlikely benefit to
common interest communities: they can often be designed better than a public
neighborhood. Now in most places the design of a CIC must meet the same
standards as a public one, but since the local government won't ever be taking
over the maintenance of a CIC's infrastructure and amenities the
government often lets things slide that it wouldn't otherwise.
Designers of gated communities may have an opportunity to experiment with novel
design concepts. One famous example of this is Village Homes, a CIC here in
Davis, California. The community was designed to built in the 1970s and
reflects the values of the environmental movement of the time. Streets were very
narrow because a network of pedestrian paths is the primary circulation system.
Front doors open to those paths and lead residents to communal gardens, orchards,
vineyards, and public greens. This kind of community would be impossible to design
and build as a public community but this is truly a common interest community.
Residents buy into the neighborhood and the environmentalist philosophy. The
result is a truly innovative and amazing place to live. So far this video probably
sounds like I'm advocating for CICs and gated communities. "You can be safe,
prestigious, and environmentally sensitive, all generously paying taxes to
the local government!" But there are still many negatives of gated communities and
they largely outweigh any positives. Gated communities create a physical
landscape of fear, where we wall ourselves off from others. This quote
really sums it all up. "Gated communities churn a vicious cycle
by attracting like-minded residents who seek shelter from outsiders and whose
physical seclusion then worsens paranoid groupthink against outsiders. A study of
gated community residents did interviews with those residents. While they don't
represent the thoughts of all people, they highlight some of the problems with
isolating yourself from others. Here are a couple of excerpts. "Who lives in your
community?" "People who are retired and don't want to maintain large yards.
People who want to raise families in a more protected environment." "What do you
mean by that?" "There are a lot of families who have in
the last couple of years, after we built, as the crime rate, or the reporting of
that crime rate has become such a prominent part of the news of the
community, there's been a lot of 'fear flight.'"
"My daughter feels very threatened when she sees poor people." "How do you explain
that?" "She hasn't had enough exposure. We were driving next to a truck with some
day laborers and equipment in the back, and we were parked beside them at the
light. She wanted to move because she was afraid those people were going to come
and get her. They looked scary to her. I explained
that they were workmen, and they're the 'backbone of our country,' they're coming
from work, you know, but..." These aren't cherry picked examples
nearly all of the 20 interviewees in the study mentioned some fear of others or
crime in their interview. The ironic thing is that gated communities may not
even deliver on their promise of security. The teenager living next door
can still steal your lawn ornament and these gated communities are not Fort
Knox. A criminal can learn the gate code or cut through a hedge pretty easily.
Many of the residents interviewed in that study still had security systems
for their homes. I mentioned that local governments may
like gated communities for their tax benefits, but gated communities may be a
double-edged sword. Gated community residents may be less willing to
contribute to public life outside their gates. When a library or parks bond
appears on the ballot that would raise their taxes they're more likely to vote
against it and could potentially deprive amenities to the residents who don't
live in gated communities. Ultimately communities like Canyon Lake and
countless others offer the promise of a safe community surrounded by people "just
like you." The problem is that when you separate yourself off from other groups
you might reduce your tolerance and understanding for different kinds of
people. The beauty of cities is the mixing of
cultures and the possibility of a shared prosperity but gated communities turn
their backs on that image of the city. So gates making people out of these
communities, but I'm not sure I want to be let in. There is one community you'll
definitely want to be a part of, and that's the online learning community
over at Skillshare. Skillshare offers 20,000 courses on design, business,
technology, and more. Premium membership gives you unlimited access to
high-quality classes on must know topics so you can improve your skills, unlock
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