Gated Community, Hated Community

A place with gates isn't a “community.” It's a compound.

As my friend Merri Ferrell put it, “When the gated communities started to spring up all over the US, I knew there was trouble. Enemy of farms (paves and builds over farmland, not just houses but what those idiots think they ‘need’ which are box stores and malls), enemy of cities (hate diversity, hate public services from libraries to transit), hate nature (kids live in car seats shuttled from planned indoor play dates, all controlled, front yard is only a display — no ‘playing’ in a yard or woods, all of which are regarded as the great unknown) and hatred of each other. Fake rock, fake PVC fences, fake sod, vinyl siding, windows that don’t open, no porches for community, no interaction with others, extruded crab meat phoniness and walled-up isolationism. The psychology of these places is horrific but in the 1980s, this was the model for the American family, and the kind of house that became the failed housing market.”

I had that same creepy frisson when the “gated community” phenomenon started to happen. “Gated communities” are the literal expression of the symbolic division of the nation into plutocrats and serfs.

Come to think of it, hell does have gates, doesn’t it?