GETTING THE GATE : Make the City More Like the Suburbs? There Goes the Neighborhood.

City and suburb (yes, they do exist here, and you can tell them apart--the city part is where stuff is open late, and there’s a lot of bad driving) are engaged in a kind of osmotic exchange. Each is borrowing from the other in the almost-desperate attempt to maintain, or regain, what we now call “quality of life.”

Notice, by the way, that quality has stopped being accompanied by any descriptive word. We used to speak of high quality and low quality, but now we assume that the mere mention of the word must imply something fine. This practice started with Eddie of Zachary All, whose original TV commercials--and don’t we all feel old watching his son pitching suits on cable?--made the tantalizingly unchallengeable promise: “You get quality, and selection, at a price.” Not necessarily high quality. Not necessarily great selection. Not even a low price, necessarily. With promises like that, no retailer need ever see the inside of Chapter 11.

Eddie and Little Eddie aside, the suburbs are slowly learning that not all the good ideas about human settlement were thought up since World War II. There is, for example, a trend--newsmagazines would call it “burgeoning,” but that’s their problem--toward tearing down aging suburban shopping centers and replacing them with, of all things, downtowns.

We see it locally in Santa Monica’s decision to rip out the death march that was the Third Street mall and replace it with an instantly charming street full of offices and bookstores as well as theaters and restaurants. Even in the exurban Northeast, where any hint of urban living used to be a verboten reminder of where the weekenders had to endure their weekdays, old-style shopping centers are being razed. In their stead are going streets where people can walk from one place to another, where they can not only shop, but also just be. Shopping is a human activity long admired in the suburbs, but being hasn’t enjoyed much cachet until the recent discovery that it’s something people still like to do, even though it doesn’t cost as much as shopping.

On the other hand, the suburban habit of putting houses behind walls and gates--the housing development as fortified duchy--is beginning to beckon to city folk who are tired of the hustle and bustle of actual streets.

There have always been a few gated streets in Los Angeles. As a child, I was forever gazing at “Fremont Place, a Private Street,” as the sign said, and wondering how you got to be a private street, and why.

Now, a Hollwood neighborhood called Whitley Heights is providing the answers, trying to get city approval to erect gates at eight entrances to the area. Why gates? Because walls aren’t as pretty?

Actually, the reasoning gets a bit obscure. The proponents claim the purpose is to cut down on crime caused by transients’ wafting uphill from Hollywood Boulevard--the well-known cars full of wandering homeless burglars. The police, distracted by their own Gates, say these people wouldn’t know a high-crime neighborhood if they ordered pizza from it. And then there lurks the suspicion of the real motive: Brokers have been quoted saying that as soon as Whitley Heights gets gated, property values will soar.

In other words, the real estate market, such as it is these days, is providing its own solemn judgment that city neighborhoods are better the more they try to emulate suburban neighborhoods. This gives us a clue to future actions on the Whitley Heights front: removing the sidewalks (they’re a proven boon to peeping Toms), de-paving the streets and a petition drive to get nearby stores to close by 9 p.m. MSCT (Mall Standard Closing Time).

Ironically, two neighborhoods around Fremont Place are rejecting the siren call of the gated approach. Despite a recent crime increase, Hancock Park and Windsor Square have maintained their willingness to be part of the city, rather than withdrawing into the Orange County of the imagination.

The streets belong to all of us. We bought and paid for them. If I want to take a purposeless drive through your neighborhood just to look at it--maybe to fantasize about living there one day, maybe to be glad that I don’t--that’s part of my little passel of rights as a citizen of a city. And if I want to walk through a bustling and attractive downtown, hey, I’ll head for the ‘burbs.