Gated Communities ≠ New Urbanism

Enormous gated communities in Latin America - complete with schools, clinics, and a wide array of recreational possibilities (I thought the rich and scared only played golf?) - are now billing themselves as Latin America's best example of New Urbanism. "What the !@$&," you may ask, but I'm serious. Some folks think this may be the future of such communities here as well.

Comments

[Helmers]

There is no way a gated community is square with the concept of new urbanism. This is an example of the post-modern urbanism that is taking over all facets of the built environment. Usurping a "theme" or a cultural identity is central to the idea of post-modern urbanism. Developers, architects, and investors have created strange new animals living in our cities, suburbs, and country that cannot easily be classified or identified according to earlier definitions.

The idea of usurping the plesant, walkable, feeling of New Urbanist design and planting it inside the shell of a gated community works nicely in the post modern context. In fact, it is inevitable that more of these mutant/mixed forms of development will populate cities globally.

While we are begining to understand the character of post modern development, the reasons behind it are still unclear.

[teb]

I consider myself a new urbanist and as a rule I would be opposed to gated communities. But depending on the size and composition of the community, the gate itself probably becomes functionally irrelevant. If you gate in a large enough area all the "hazards" that you fear from the outside community are likely to exist within the gates. Also, from a practical point of view, a mixed-use design would need to have enough traffic to support its retail component, which, at least in the U.S., would be difficult unless the development was city-sized or the gates were not tightly controlled. It could be more like a middle eastern or roman walled city than what we would think of as a gated community.

Now I would bet that they are violating other tenets of New Urbanism; most likely the one about a "broad range of housing types and price levels." Also the gates and walls themselves pose obvious problems for "connectivity."

I would also imagine that the whole deal is more problematic in certain Latin American countries where the disparity between rich and poor is so binary and so great, not to mention other issues of social unrest. As much credit as I give New Urbanism it can't solve all problems.

While I wouldn't want to embrace these things, it is probably is worth looking behind the walls to see what they're actually building. Again if we're talking about functionality, this probably mirrors some of the same problems with greenfield NU developments; they may be fine neighborhoods internally but diversity of residents may be limited by the cost of travel and they fail to connect to anything else. Still they may be able to grow into something at a later date and maybe in a gated "town" the walls could someday come down. Better that there be something worthwhile in the chewy center.