Living behind gatesI live in a gated community in east
London. You will be relieved to hear
that I am not a thrusting executive living in the shadow of Canary Wharf but
rather a community worker living in one of the more obscure corners of
Hackney. So how did I come to be living
in a gated community? Given that so much
is being written and said about gated communities -- a quick search on the
Internet, for instance, even reveals a symposium dedicated to this
subject! I thought perhaps you might be
interested to hear from one of these devilish figures of the modern urban scene
who has chosen to isolate himself from the 'vibrancy' of east London street
life. The truth is that I did not choose to
live in a gated community. We were in a
situation of rather acute housing need when my wife and I managed to cobble
together enough money to buy a tiny shared ownership house in one of the many
new developments in Hackney built on an old small industrial site, rather
grandly named after one of the large houses that used to grace Hackney 200
years ago. We were the first people to move in and gradually over the next year
the small community of 12 dwellings filled up with a fairly normal selection of
Hackney residents, a radiographer, a DJ, a care assistant -- to mention a few. The last residents to move in were more
activist than the rest of us and one soon became chair of the residents association. This association quickly focused on security
issues. The community was a little
backwater off a residential street and we began to experience problems with
people using it as a private hideaway -- a boy truanting from school, people
using it as a site for al fresco sex and groups of young boys playing
football. At our end of the community
this caused little problem but at the other end there was more
disturbance. The idea of retaining
control over who came in to the community through putting up gates quickly
gained support through the lobbying of the chair of the association. We expressed some doubts about the need for
the gates but this evoked some fairly ferocious resistance from the partner of
the chair so we backed off. Crucial to
making the idea of the gates a reality was a grant from the Community Chest of
£5000 which meant that reasonably modest contributions from residents were
required. So in due course the gates
were put in. The gates did reduce the amount of
casual nuisance in the community and there have been no substantial problems
but a number of significant issues. There has been some unauthorised access
into the community by boys climbing over a wall, which has never got out of
hand but the crossing of the boundary seems to make it more threatening. The biggest potential problem is the
entry system which is based on a link through to your telephone. This requires a phone bill to be paid on a
regular basis but only a third of households are contributing to this at the
moment -- hardly a satisfactory situation.
It also requires one to have a landline and as far as we are concerned
requires us to have a second landline -- quite a substantial extra cost. Generally it doesn't seem to make visiting
the community easy and we've had a number of situations where people haven't
been able to get into see us. The residents association has also
ceased to operate properly. The chair
and his partner who made it happen and put in a lot of work to get the gates
erected, suffered harassment from their neighbours and suddenly decided to
leave. Given the smallness of the
community it is difficult to find a chair, secretary and treasurer to carry the
work forward and solve the problems indicated above. Gated communities in social science perspectiveGated communities have received
considerable attention in recent years.
In 2003 there was a conference sponsored by the Neighbourhood Renewal
Unit which looked at the issue from an international perspective[1]. Most of the papers presented to the
conference were concerned about the implications of gated communities for
society as a whole -- worrying that the rich were isolating themselves in a
secure world increasingly separated from the poor and the marginalised. Gated communities are also seen as part of an
Americanisation and privatisation of society, for they are, as yet, more common
in America than Europe. Much of the
discourse relates to out-of-town or 'edge city' developments where leisure
centres and parks were included behind the gates. My experience is of course different as
Gordon MacLeod[2]
indicates in his helpful delineation of the different types of gated
communities 1) Lifestyle
Communities: these can take the form of retirement communities, golf and
leisure communities, and the suburban new town. 2) Prestige
Communities: representing preserves for the rich, the famous, the executive,
and more generally the ‘fortunate fifth’ of the income ladder. 3) Security
Zone Communities: built primarily on the fear of crime and outsiders, divided
by Blakely and Snyder into ‘perches’, city, suburban, and barricade, the latter
concentrated mainly in the poorest areas). They are called perches because it
is not the developers who build the gates but the residents, who are often
desperately trying to maintain their neighbourhood The Security Zone Community almost
exactly describes my situation. Whilst the mainstream of the
sociological community seems to view gated communities with scepticism[3]
there are voices being raised in their defence, particularly where they provide
young professionals with the confidence to remain in the city[4]. I have also been struck by the number of
positive comments about our small community from cab drivers and other ordinary
Londoners, my anecdotal experience would suggest that they are viewed as a good
thing by ordinary people and that it is only a small but influential group of
left inclined professionals that are sceptical about them. Nonetheless being on the outside of gated
communities can be an uncomfortable experience.
I lived next door to one in Battersea.
Here the Livingston estate had been transformed by the council into a
gated community with swimming pool and leisure centre called the Falcons. Living next door to it in the rather
notorious Winstanley estate I was struck by the complete lack of connection
between the two communities and irritated that it made my journey to Clapham
Junction Station noticeably longer. I
also suffered a sleepless night from the car alarm of a sports car tucked
safely behind the security wall! Theological Perspectives on Gated CommunitiesThe church seems to have largely
embraced the scepticism about gated communities[5]. In fact the gated community almost seems to
become a symbol of what is wrong with the world -- emphasising that cities are
no longer the unified communities of our medieval past but diverse
conglomerations where everyone does as they see fit. I suspect that this antipathy to gated
communities whilst often being rooted in a theological commitment to community is
reinforced by practical pastoral experience.
When I first and came to London in the Eighties there were few parts
which were not readily accessible to being door knocked or leafleted but this
has become less and less the case. The
church seems to be increasingly excluded even from its geographical parishes --
the gated community symbolises this in a starkly obvious way but as far as I am
aware there has been no serious theological reflection on gated communities. I began my thinking by turning to the Bible. In the Bible gates and walls are almost
universally seen as a positive phenomena as Paul Minear[6]
describes Without those walls, an ancient city
would have been helpless before any invader; with them the enemy could be
repelled. In passing through those gates citizens passed from danger to
security, from violence to peace, from fear to confidence Nehemiah, often seen as the archetype
of urban regeneration, spends most of his of efforts on rebuilding walls and
gates. Nothing could be more important
than strong walls and solid gates, this was the very beginning of
community. But, of course, it was only
community for people inside the gates.
Research seems to indicate that people in American gated communities are
more involved in their communities than people in traditional urban
neighbourhoods[7]. They seem to provide a safe environment in
which engagement with your neighbours is more possible -- at least in certain
sorts of communities. Certainly I know
my neighbours in my gated community far better than any other neighbours I have
had in London, although perhaps this is partly the consequence of all coming
into a new development together. But there are other images of gates in
the Bible. In the Old Testament gates
are often seen as a meeting place where the elders gather to discuss and pass
judgment. This seems rather analogous to
the modern-day location of the school gates where mothers meet to gossip and
share news. Here we don't encounter the
shut gate but the open gate -- these are gates which allow access into a
restricted space and are therefore places where people congregate and
socialise. They allow decisions to be
made about when access is to be allowed and when it is to be denied. The final gates of the Bible, however, are
always open 22I did not see a temple in the city,
because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.... 25On no day will
its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. 26The glory and honor
of the nations will be brought into it. 27Nothing impure will ever enter it,
nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose
names are written in the Lamb's book of life. Revelation
21 It is interesting that in the final
vision of Revelation the walls and the gates are still in existence -- in fact
they are beautified and made glorious -- the boundary is still kept, but there
is no need to shut the gate because all the problems and tensions of the world
have been resolved. The Bible therefore celebrates
gates. It celebrates their strength and
their resilience and the safety which they bring but it also celebrates the
opening of gates. This, perhaps, is
something which modern-day gated communities forget to do We have a strong city; God makes salvation its walls and ramparts. Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter, the nation that keeps faith. You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you. Isaiah
25: 1-3 The prophets were also aware that walls
and gates were not an ultimate security -- that can only be found in God, but
they didn't condemn gates and walls, they could be an expression of God's
providential care. This is perhaps
something we need to reflect on in our irritation with people who exclude the
church from our parishes, making it more difficult for us to engage with them
and 'build community' or 'plant churches'.
No doubt the prophets would have condemned attempts by the rich to
retreat into exclusive communities whose gates were never flung open and from where
they could exploit and oppress. But in
the modern city it is not only the rich who want to live behind gates -- it is
also, in my experience, an aspiration of the poor. Towards an Appropriate Vision of Gated CommunitiesThe city can be a very invasive
place. We have the capacity to make
increasing amount of noise but build houses with ever thinner walls. Advertising pursues us into every corner of
our lives. Dubious salesman on our front
doorstep, insist that we sign on the line right now. Even if we leave aside the contentious issue
of the fear of crime I, for one, feel the increasing need to be able to control
how much the outside world invades my personal space. I don't want to live in a privatised world, I
want to live in a healthy and friendly relationship with my neighbours and
even, when the time and place is right, build community with them. Yes I long for the time when the gates can be
flung open wide, but sadly that eschatology has not yet been realised. Maybe the fundamental issue is establishing
what are the appropriate boundaries for any given context. Contemporary theology is much concerned
with crossing boundaries[8]. Crossing the boundaries of race and culture,
crossing the boundaries which divide people from people, crossing the
boundaries which cause alienation and separation. This is all very laudable but sometimes it is
necessary to create boundaries. Working in
faith based community development I am only too well aware of the problems
caused by a lack of boundaries. Lay
workers, for instance, often become dispirited when there is no clear sense of
boundaries between them as members of the congregation and workers for the
congregation. There often seems to be a
push to create a completely inclusive, open community which sounds nice in
theory but in practice is a complex morass of assumptions and disappointments. Poor communities, in particular, generally
need a clear sense of their own boundaries in order to flourish. Williams and Warner in their study of
evangelical urban youth ministry in America show how the destructive boundaries
of neighbourhood and race are crossed by providing people with a new identity
based on a new set of moral boundaries[9]. Similarly Bob Lupton describes an urban
church which set a clear boundary around the geographical location from which
church members could come[10]. This focused their attention on a particular
neighbourhood and enabled them to become a force for regeneration and renewal The Lawndale Community Church, through
establishing parish boundaries, has become a powerful agent of transformation
in their community. Their theology of turf, though originally somewhat mixed in
motive, has caused their neighborhood to blossom Maybe the parish system is not as
irrelevant to urban ministry as we thought! I have no doubt the people are right to
question the creation and imposition of boundaries. They can be destructive of community and the
good of the city, but my reflection on my experience of a gated community is of
the increasing need in the modern city to create and maintain boundaries of all
sorts. For as Caroline Westerhoff says
in her reflection on the boundaries of hospitality Boundaries afford order, protection,
and identity for both people and communities.
Without the consistency, safety, and meaning they provide, we would find
it difficult to undertake anything new[11] My identity, for example, as a
Christian is important to me and I start to feel uncomfortable when I find myself
rebranded as a member of the faith communities in order to promote a
government-sponsored 'inclusive society'.
Similarly in the noise and rush of Hackney I want a safe community into
which I can retreat and I feel no guilt about that. In fact it seems right to me to celebrate the
gates and walls which I create and which make me feel safe -- even if sometimes
that safety might be something of an illusion (!). The issue, for me, is not the creation of
gates and walls but my ability to open them and enjoy the social interaction
which that creates. As Westerhoff goes
on to say Once our boundaries are defined,
questions of hospitality arise -- questions about the welcoming of any and all
to approach our boundaries and perhaps to cross them On a broader canvas I believe we need
to stop using gated communities as a symbol for all that is bad in modern
society and rather understand what is going on for the people who live in
them. They cannot be judged en masse but
each particular community must be considered in its context -- some no doubt
are problematic but others might just be a very valid response to a particular
urban context, and maybe even provide insights into how to recreate urban
community. The particularity of
individual gated communities needs to be thoroughly attended to, perhaps then a
wider understanding of them can emerge and we can begin to understand what
their role in modern cities might be. Of
one thing we can be sure, they are going to be an increasing fact of urban
life. [1] http://www.neighbourhoodcentre.org.uk/gated.html [2]
Gordon MacLeod Privatizing the city? The tentative push
towards edge urban developments and gated communities in the United Kingdom Report
for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister August 2003 [3] Eugene McLaughlin and John Muncie Walled Cities: Surveillance, Regulation and Segregation in Unruly Cities ed. Steve Pile et al Routledge 1999 [4]
Tony Manzi & Bill Smith Bowers Gated Communities as
Club Goods: Segregation or Social Cohesion? London Research Focus Group University
of Westminster 2004 [5] See for instance Laurie Green Urban Ministry in the Kingdom of God 2003 [6]
Paul Minear Open Your Eyes Bible Study Isaiah 60 St
Andrews Consultation 1977 World Alliance of Reformed Churches [7] MacLeod ibid. [8]
e.g. Patty Lane Crossing Cultures -- a beginner's guide to
making friends in a multicultural world Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity
Press, 2002 [9]
Rhys H. Williams & R. Stephen Warner Creating Urban
Evangelicalism: Youth Ministry, Moral Boundaries, and Social Diversity May
2001 [10]
Bob Lupton Community-Friendly Theology March 1999
newsletter volume 11 number 1 [11] Caroline Westerhoff Good Fences -- the Boundaries of Hospitality Cowley Publications 1999 |