Courageous ‘No’ to the Social Fort

Centuries ago, the wealthy of Europe hid themselves behind walls--as much out of fear as out of real security needs. In modern Los Angeles, not much seems to have changed; those who can afford it cloister themselves behind the gilded bars of gated communities. As innocuous as these little settlements may seem, they rip at the threads tying communities together. Such sentiment may not have been at the top of the Burbank City Council’s list of reasons for rejecting the city’s first gated development, but council members nonetheless did the right thing by turning the project down.

Cayman Development Co. wanted permission to gate two streets leading to its 117-acre project--129 homes expected to cost between $500,000 and $1 million. In trying to persuade the council to approve the gates, Cayman executives dangled the prospect of higher property values and the municipal side effect of higher property taxes. Happily, the council resisted the temptation, focusing instead on more practical questions such as how firetrucks and ambulances might be impeded by blocked streets.

As real as emergency access concerns are, the big problem with gated communities is that they aren’t really communities at all. No one who hunkers down behind walls is part of a community. In fact, such developments--and they are common across northern Los Angeles County--slowly kill the communities to which they attach themselves. They divide rather than connect. Slowly, the collective spirit that brings neighborhoods together gets locked behind some gate as residents peer out with suspicion. Planning scholar Edward Blakely aptly calls them “social forts.”

Oddly enough, part of the allure of carefully planned gated developments is the desire to feel connected to a neighborhood again. Internally, that may work as residents tend to be of roughly the same ethnic, social and income class. But the very homogeneity that fosters friendliness behind the walls foments division outside them. For instance, residents of gated enclaves like to point out that their streets are safe and quiet because only residents use them. True, but the same cannot be said for the streets leading in and out of the project. Neighborly obligation does not end at the guard shack.

So far at least, Burbank has resisted the pressure to carve its neighborhoods into armored retreats. Other municipalities should look to Burbank for the courage to say no to more gated communities. Southern California already is divided into neighborhoods of rich and poor, white and brown. Despite the happy talk following the 1992 riots, little has changed to make the region more than a bunch of disparate communities living uncomfortably together. Building walls of brick to reinforce the walls of color and heritage only deepens the divide. Neighborhoods work because they are stitched into the larger fabric of a city. Without that connection, they exist only as fortresses, separate and apart.