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Gated communities in Bogotá house 2.7 million people, or almost 40% of all households. Today, all socioeconomic groups in Bogotá find a home behind gates and walls, and 20% of the urban poor live in gated communities. With the rise of the gated community in Latin America and worldwide, a new type of public space has been emerging in recent decades: streets bordered by walls, fences, and the occasional gate, formed when two gated communities face each other. It is an urgent matter for urban studies and urban planning to understand how these streets, formed when two gated communities meet, can still fulfil the functions of a locus of democracy. With this research, I aim to provide a better understanding of the implications of gated communities for non-exclusionary access and security for all users in the streets outside the gates and thereby on the very democratic character of public space. As this is an interdisciplinary research project dealing with complex and multidimensional public spaces dominated by walls and fences, I approach this issue from various perspectives and through different disciplinary, methodological and theoretical approaches. First, I speak to gated community literature, where I identify several research gaps: the imprecision of the concept of contemporary gated communities, the understudied spaces outside the gates and the rarely studied users in these spaces, including non-residents. I then draw on literature on the relationship between the built environment and security, with a special focus on the role of the passerby in these debates. I finally speak to public space literature with a focus on exclusion and democratic functions of public space. This dissertation consists of four articles. In article 1, I create a novel typology focusing on the spatial dimension of the gated community, portraying it as an integral part of the urban realm rather than an isolated island. I present five distinctive types of gated communities in Bogotá, varying widely in how they shape security and street activity in the surrounding public spaces. In article 2, my focus lies in the implications of gated communities on exclusion mechanisms and security in public space. I show that in these spaces between gated communities, the passerby is perceived as a threat to residents and hence not welcomed, making the streets outside of exclusive enclaves also exclusive. Article 3 (co-authored) is motivated by the reciprocal relationship between gated communities and security. The most dominant reason for the rise of gated communities is insecurity. While current research remains inconclusive on whether gated communities do, in fact, increase security for their residents, we pose a different question: Do gated communities with their walls, fences, and the occasional gate create insecure spaces outside the gates? We find that gated communities are consistently associated with public space crime in the adjacent streets. In article 4 (co-authored), we suggest that the debate around urban security would benefit from reflexive perspectives on security, understanding security as a negotiation of inclusion and exclusion. These results suggest that gated communities redistribute access and security in adjacent streets to the benefit of a clearly defined user group, the gated community residents, at the cost of non-exclusionary access and the security of the passerby in public spaces. Thus, the individual decision to live behind fences threatens the collective interest of society to live in inclusive, secure and democratic cities. My research offers a first step towards a more precise discussion of an evolving phenomenon, the gated community that today houses not just the elites but also the urban poor. I shed light on the implications of this housing model on the immediate surroundings, outlining an urgent challenge for academia and policymaking. Finally, I contribute to literature on the built environment and its relation with security by combining perspectives from environmental criminology, urban studies, reflexive security studies and law in order to create a more comprehensive approach to the issue. This is a transdisciplinary research project, with a constant dialogue with actors in the field informing the research process. Based on these parallel and intertwined processes, I provide policy recommendations for cities, aiming at mitigating the negative externalities of gated communities.

Schweizer Monat, 96 (1039), ISSN:0036-7400

Trialog, 114, ISSN:0724-6234

ISBN:978-3-906031-32-3

ISBN:978-3-906031-31-6

FCL Magazine, 2, ISSN:2339-5427

FCL Magazine, 2, ISSN:2339-5427

Russian Analytical Digest (RAD), 129, ISSN:1863-0421