The Divided City: Gated Communities, Everyday Mobilities and Public Space

Abstract

In both places, I am stopped at the gates by a security guard who asks me to sign in before I am allowed to enter as a “visitor”. Inside, closed-circuit television cameras conspicuously monitor public areas. Individual residential units within the development are carbon copies of each other, each bearing signs of embellishment in vain attempts to stamp individuality on an intentionally bland canvas. Both spaces are also distinctly classed — compounding the homogeneity of the artificial landscape. When I leave both gated communities, I have to sign out, my transient visit tracked and recorded. That, however, is where the similarities end.