No. They should have portcullises instead.
And don’t forget the moats. With alligators, or maybe pirahnas.
Not a problem. He can’t get in. There is a gate.
Sure you can do it locally. And the “gated community” kinda people will move to a place that does allow it.
Gated communities are more symbol than anything else. Gates are actually a lot easier to get past than closed apartment buildings with coded entry. and until Amazon can deliver groceries by drone and most people telecommute, everyone will still be out and about.
When gated communities become a) effective at keeping undesirables out, and b) are self-sufficient enough to make it unnecessary for anyone to leave the confines, then you’ll have something to worry about.
As the shadows fall the wealthier kind of gated communities will have difficulties starting when the minimum wage guards begin turning their gaze inwards rather than outwards.
Gated communities make it easier for the ringing of revolution.
The residents pay for the street with their taxes. That’s why some towns restrict parking to residents only. The people who pay for the streets don’t like having their parking spaces filled up by outsiders.
I believe the term is portculli.
First, guards that have to actually use force to keep the masses out will get a really nice salary making it worth their while, as compared to minimum wage guards who just watch for criminals.
Second, the upper middle class is huge in this country. The poor number only what, 20%? Unless things change dramatically, no matter how much wealth disparities increase, there will still be a lot more well off people than poor people, which means no revolution, no mass violence, and if there is any mass violence by the poor, the government will put it down brutally with the active support of the more numerous well off.
Portculles.
I agree. People don’t become isolated because they live in gated communities. They move into gated communities because they already want to be isolated.
But what degree of “local” do we use as a measurement? Same city? Same community or neighborhood? Same street?
My street doesn’t have sidewalks or planting or lawns; the other neighborhood’s street does. I’m paying for it, as taxes are city-wide. But I’m not allowed to park there.
Doesn’t seem like good government.
(But…I don’t know: does having a city sidewalk and plantings and lawns in front of a house increase the house’s assessed value for tax purposes? That would go a way to mollifying my gripe.)
If this goes the way most of the threads started by Ralph he won’t be back. But I have no idea where he got the idea that gated communities are full of rich people. All the ones I know are middle class. Most aren’t even upper middle class.
I moved into a gated community because that’s where the house I wanted was.
I actually would have preferred it not to be gated…but oh well.
Also, for the OP, I certainly don’t qualify as rich.
The vast majority of Hilton Head SC is gated areas. One funny thing, they have a Wal Mart but it’s well hidden off the main road behind a lot of trees. There is just a small sign on the road for the store.
I agree. As a guy who makes a living delivering door hangers, anything you can do to help my delivery teams get access to rich neighborhoods, the better.
When I lived in Miami, I lived in a gated apartment complex in West Kendall. Previous to that, I’d only lived in gritty urban neighborhoods. The kind where people look at you askance when you tell them you live there.
Give me a “bad” neighborhood any day. That gated nonsense is not for me. It was all window dressing. If you pulled up in front of the swipe key thingie and your card wasn’t working or you couldn’t find it, the driver of the car behind you would let you borrow theirs. Or you could just drive through, since the gate was often out of order anyway. Or you could just park your car in the Publix parking lot across the street and walk through the entrance. Which meant that if you wanted to walk across the street to go shopping, you had to take the long way through the complex’s main entrance rather than the most direct route, since the campus was surrounded by an annoying iron fence. If the apartment complex had been more spread out, so that there had been more separation between the fence and the buildings, perhaps it wouldn’t have seemed so prison-like.
The apartments were not delux or luxurious. Most of the residents were lower-middle class. We had a swimming pool, sure. But it was Florida. Everyone’s got a swimming pool.
I’m sure it made people feel safer. Personally, I’d rather trade some of that illusion for practicality. But not everyone is me or shares my tastes. Free world and all that.
While I think that there is a societal benefit in the mixing of the classes, outlawing the gated nature of these communities would do nothing to encourage this. The gate is merely a security device. Does the OP suggest that the lower classes would come to these communities to sight see, or just introduce themselves? Perhaps they could use it as a short cut to their place of work?
Most of these communities are isolated physically and residents come and go by cars. It is the car that does far more to isolate these people than the gates.
Many New York City residents live in doorman buildings which are surely the equivalent of gated communities, yet they have far more contact with different classes than people in many suburbs who do not live in gated communities, simply because they walk.
As I read the OP I could not figure out why the poster would even suggest such. Then I read the last sentence, which explains it all.
I couldn’t imagine living in a gated community, or even a community that has a HOA. I like my freedom. Which is why we live in a township in a rural county. I do pretty much whatever the hell I want. I love it.