The recent Florida shooting in a gated community raises a few questions. I was surprised a gated community needed a neighborhood watch patrol. Isn’t that the point of living in a gated community? The bad guys can’t just drive in to possibly steal, deal drugs, rape, do other crimes and drive out?
Are gated communities also fenced? To keep bad people from walking in?
What’s it like in a gated community? Does it feel safer? How does access work? Do you give a gate code to all your visitors?
Are the gates manned by security? Or are they self use with a access card or code?
How effective are gated neighborhoods? If your neighbors invite bad people in doesn’t that still bring in crime?
The answers will vary widely. Some communities are self-serve (swipe a card or punch in a code) and some have a manned guardpost. Some are so crappily maintained that the gate is always broken and stuck open so it doesn’t matter anyway. Some let guests call residents through a box at the gate so you can buzz them in.
The only constant that I can think of is fencing the rest of the property. Otherwise, there’s really no point in having a gate.
I lived in a gated community … for my shitty-ass 1st apt. in college. The phrase sounds ritzy but can be pretty meaningless. This was definitely one of those “gates always stuck open” places and, being stuffed full of college students, was plenty full of minor illegal acts, I’m sure. Whole place reeked of weed on the weekends, and this was a complex of probably twenty buildings or so, so that’s a lot of cubic feet of open fresh air to stink up.
I lived in a gated apartment complex when I lived in Miami (which seems to teem with these kinds of places). The fence was more of a pain than a benefit. The swipe card thing was positioned awkwardly so that you practically had to lean out of the window to swipe. There was a key punch system so that if you had visitors, you could give them a code to punch in. But it wouldn’t work, and inevitably the resident parked impatiently behind you in the driveway would just get out of their car and swipe you in. Which was a mega pain in the pouring rain. Plus, the place just wasn’t all that to warrant that kind of security. It was just window dressing to make people feel like they were living in a special place, when it was just another overpriced apartment complex.
I had to visit to a gated neighborhood (houses) once. I forgot how I got the gate to open, only that it took entirely too much time, but I do remember immediately hating the place once I got inside.
There’s a really bad apartment complex near a Rallys that I visit for lunch. They made the apartment complex gated to cut down on drug trafficking. It hasn’t helped. The place is still a major crime problem in that part of town.
Gated doesn’t always mean Yuppies and sculpted lawns. 
So why the fuck did you start this thread?