Habitus Magazine | Issue 17

I recently had occasion to visit a number of gated and guarded communities in Malaysia and Singapore – the former is walled off with entry through a security gate, the latter is open with public roads, but with a security presence.

Gated communities get a bad press. But there are gated communities and there are gated communities and it is worth looking at how they differ and whether or not they are all as inimical as their critics claim.

Firstly, gated communities are not new. They go all the way back to walled cities. In modern times, we could arguably see the famous Siedlungen of pre-War Berlin and Vienna as gated communities since they were substantially self-contained and the individual apartments accessed from a central courtyard which itself was accessed from the street through a portal.

Secondly, evaluating such communities turns around the degree to which they are either inclusive or exclusive. Historically, their origins have been exclusive – protecting the community from external threats. And that remains true today in cities where the crime rate effectively forces those who can afford it to take defensive measures.

With a gated community like Singapore’s Sentosa, the emphasis is also on exclusivity. It not only aims to keep the hoi poloi out, but any attempt to build community is purely tokenistic. The inevitable impression is that in this hugely expensive suburban precinct no one has the slightest idea of who their immediate neighbours are. In any case, many of the owners don’t even live there, simply using their houses as weekenders or party venues.

The Siedlungen, on the other hand, were certainly protective, but even more about community-building and affordable and innovative housing.

For a gated community to be more than defensively snobbish it needs to have a demographic and typological mix and to possess amenities which genuinely bring people together and build a sense of community. Perhaps the Mera Golf Estate outside Ipoh in Malaysia will become such a community. It has a mix of housing types with a scale of affordability while the golf club – which is literally in the centre of the estate – is a community hub because it is not just a golf club, but offers a shop, gym, yoga classes, café etc.

One scenario sees gated communities becoming more and more common as people get fed up with crime, anti-social behaviour and civil disturbance making their lives a misery. The opposing view – dating back at least as far as Jane Jacobs’ pioneering book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) – is that gated communities give a false sense of security and that community and security can be better achieved through open communities with “diversity, density and dynamism”.

Watch this space!

PAUL MCGILLICK | EDITOR