by hCa

August 2014

According to a study made by a group of urban planners in 2010, and what they could determine from satellite images, 2,290 gated community projects were completed or in construction at the time. It is enough to have a glance at the surface of the city to be able to confirm that this number has increased at least two-fold in the time that has elapsed since then, as of June 2014. Looking at this surface, one sees a different type of development; the implementation of gated communities has been moved from the city’s periphery towards the centre. The secure gated communities and the high rise residences that are constructed in more cramped areas as vertical “secure living” spaces and appear as a type of suburban city planning practice, cause the modern city to lose the quality of an integrated socialisation space attributed to it. Garden walls and gates that have been there for eternity rise and lose their transparency. As they rise in the city they appear not as the “civil” call to permission/invitation law, but as indicators of introversion and unfounded fear, the justification for which cannot be explained.

For the full version of the article: The loss of trust/security in everyday life: rising walls, the disintegrating city, the gated community, the melting state