Edward J. Blakely, dean of the School of Urban Planning and Development, stands in front of a gated community in Hancock Park. Blakely and Mary Gail Snyder have written Fortress America: Gated Communities in the United States, a study of the development and social impact of this rapidly growing phenomenon. By walling themselves in, are people cutting themselves off from the mixed, open society that is the essence of a social and political democracy?

Photo by Irene Fertik

More than 8 million Americans live in gated communities today, taking refuge from the problems of urbanization. But as people create these secure, homogeneous enclaves, what does this trend mean for the future of community and citizenship in America? By walling themselves in, are people cutting themselves off from the mixed, open society that is the essence of a social and political democracy?

These are among the questions raised by Edward J. Blakely and Mary Gail Snyder in Fortress America: Gated Communities in the United States (Brookings Institution Press, 1997), the first sweeping study of the development and social impact of this rapidly growing phenomenon.

"The thing that is most worrisome for me is this kind of 'forting up,' turning our back on what I think is the nation's civic destiny - a more heterogeneous, open society," said Blakely, dean of the School of Urban Planning and Development. His co-author, Snyder, is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of city and regional planning at UC Berkeley.

"We are a society that is seeking to bring people of all income levels and races together, but this is the direct opposite of that," Blakely said. "How can the nation have a social contract, without having social contact?"

Blakely and Snyder found that gated communities have proliferated since the 1960s and 1970s, when master-planned developments like Leisure World were the first places where Americans could wall themselves off. By 1997, an estimated 20,000 gated communities, with more than 3 million units, have been built across the country, primarily in metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles, Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, Chicago, New York and Miami. Eight out of every 10 new urban projects are gated.

And suburbanites are gating as rapidly as urban dwellers. In Southern California, gated communities doubled in the late 1980s in Orange County. In the San Fernando Valley, about 100 gated communities were built in the 1980s. Gated communities continue to grow in the 1990s, Blakely said.

Blakely and Snyder examine the political, social and governance dilemmas posed when millions of Americans opt out of the local governance system by privatizing their environment. Among other issues, they ask: Do these gated communities and walled cities point to a "fortress mentality" in America? Do gated communities reduce or increase fear? At the local level, what is the impact of gated communities on citizens' voting behavior, and what happens to cities and counties when communities are splintering off and privatizing such public resources as lakes, parks and forests?

Blakely cited three primary findings of the research:

* Segregated space is increasing, driven by desires for income security and physical security. People feel more secure behind the gates and want to ensure their property values remain high.

* Quality of community is no different in gated communities. Even though residents moved to gated areas believing they would find their nostalgic idea of community, they did not. In fact, these communities promote privacy within privacy; residents tend to stay in their own backyards and do not visit on porches or front lawns.

* Gated communities reflect a "forting up" mentality. Rather than bringing people of different races and income levels together in an open society, these communities foster segregation. This also promotes privatization, replacing public government with private organizations like homeowner associations.

As more private communities provide their own security, street maintenance, parks, recreation, garbage collection and other services, it leaves the poor and less well-to-do dependent on ever-reduced services of city and county governments, Blakely said.

In their research study, the authors collected both statistical and descriptive data, integrating site visits and observations, focus groups, interviews and a survey of gated communities. They concentrated their focus group sessions and interviews in six metropolitan areas with high concentrations of gated communities: the San Francisco Bay area, Los Angeles, Riverside-Palm Springs, Orange County, Dallas and Miami.

Blakely and Snyder identified three distinct types of gated communities - "lifestyle communities," "prestige communities" and "security zone communities" - serving very different housing markets. All have some system of access control, but they differ substantially in how they address the development of a sense of community within their walls.

In lifestyle communities, the gates provide security and separation for leisure activities and amenities offered inside. Lifestyle communities include retirement communities, golf and leisure communities, and suburban "new towns."

Retirement communities such as the nationwide chain of Leisure Worlds offer senior citizens the opportunity to engage in a wide variety of activities close to their homes.

The golf and leisure communities, such as Blackhawk Country Club near San Francisco or Rancho Mirage in California's Coachella Valley, cater to people with specialized interests, like golf or tennis.

The suburban new towns are master-planned developments, carefully pre-packaged environments built by developers such as the Newhall Land and Farming Co. and the Irvine Co., both of Southern California. Many of these new towns, such as Canyon Lake, located 60 miles east of Orange County, become full-fledged cities.

Gated prestige developments, like those in affluent Pacific Palisades or Marble-head in San Clemente, are occupied primarily by the rich and famous - the affluent, top fifth of Americans. These developments feed on exclusion and status, Blakely and Snyder write. "In the prestige communities, image is of primary importance; their gates denote a barrier of status," they write.

Unlike lifestyle and prestige communities, in which the developers built the walls and gates as a marketing strategy, security-zone communities are gated by the residents themselves. "The fortress mentality is perhaps clearest here, where groups of people band together to shut out their neighbors," the authors write.

Many of these are located in inner-city and lower-income neighborhoods as well as suburbs, where people watch urban problems creeping closer.

Statistics on whether the gates actually do serve as a deterrent to crime are mixed. In the security-zone communities, one study found declines in crime right after closure, but none were sustained for more than a short time. In the lifestyle communities, Blakely and Snyder found that many experienced the same problems as other urban communities. In some cases, the gates created a false sense of security. Police reported that crime was as likely to come from people living within the gates as from outside.

BLAKELY AND Snyder propose alternatives to gates, such as community-building and combating problems that create crime.

"The more you lock places up, then the places left unlocked become even more susceptible to problems - so are you going to lock everybody up?" Blakely asked. "Where is this going to lead?"