Behind the Gates: Life, Security, and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America / Edition 1

by Setha Low

Overview

In the last twenty years, thousands upon thousands of the upper and middle classes have retreated into gated communities. In 2002 it is estimated that one in eight Americans will live in these exclusive neighborhoods. What has sparked this alarming trend?
Behind the Gates is Low's revealing account of what life is like inside these suburban fortresses. After years researching and interviewing families in Long Island, New York and San Antonio, Texas, Low provides an inside view of gated communities to help explain why people flee to these enclaves. Parents with children, young married couples, "empty-nesters," and retirees express their need for safety, their secret fears of a more ethnically diverse America, and their desire to recapture the close-knit, picket-fenced communities of their childhood. Ironically, she shows, gated neighborhoods are in fact no safer than other suburbs, and many who move there are disheartened by the insularity and restrictive rules of the community.
Low probes the hopes, dreams, and fears of her subjects to portray the subtle change in American middle-class values marked by the emergence of enclosed communities in the suburbs.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415944380
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	04/25/2003
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Setha Low is Professor of Anthropology and Environmental Psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is the author or editor of numerous books, including Theorizing the City: The New Urban Anthropology Reader; Housing, Culture, and Design; Cultural Spaces; and Place Attachment.

Table of Contents

Preface Prologue 1. Arriving at the Gates 2. Protecting the Children 3. Recreating the Past 4. Searching for the Perfect Community 5. Urban Fear 6. Retirement and Taxes 7. Leaving the Gates Behind 8. Unlocking the Gated Community Bibliography Appendix: Residential History Interview Schedule

Editorial Reviews

"Provocative and disturbing, this much-needed book holds up an unsparing mirror to an unsettling sign of our times." -- The New York Times
"In an engaging, first person narrative, Setha Low takes us inside gated communities throughout the United States and brings us face-to-face with the people and paranoia that reside there. This innovative ethnography reveals how fear of crime and of people of color have distorted the American dream." -- Barry Glassner, author of The Culture of Fear
"A useful document and, in many of its conclusions, a sensible one." -- The Washington Post
"Low's interviews leave little room for doubt that those who live in gated communities do so because they want to get away from certain types of people, whether criminals or members of other classes or races. She gives a good background sketch of the ways that these communities are simply an outgrowth of centuries-old forms of social controls and class separation." -- The Washington Monthly
"[Low] combines field observations, interviews with residents, and personal reflection to create an unusual combination of academic research and creative nonfiction." -- Library Journal
"In recent years, millions of Americans have moved into gated residential communities. Setha Low's wonderful book carries the reader past the guards to assess private communities through vivid interviews that reveal residents' intense hopes and fears. Low explores the social and spatial costs of everyday life Behind the Gates in a beautifully-written, accessible book of wide appeal for general readers as well as specialists in space and design." -- Dolores Hayden, author of Redesigning the American Dream: Gender, Housing, and Family Life
"Setha Low's Behind the Gates adds depth and a new dimension to our understanding of who lives in the new Fortressed America. She looks at the people who inhabit these privatized communities with powerful analysis and good writing. Her book reveals gated community residents through a very clear lens that shows their real hopes, fears and foolishness." -- Edward J. Blakely, co-author of Fortress America
"Setha Low takes a creative approach to the fortified mentality and the inhabitants of fastest growing communities in America. Through interviews with residents on both coasts and an exploration of her own family's sense of 'home', she helps us understand the urge for safety and security. The book is original and important; spatial memories, as well as race, class and ethnic choices and prejudices are subtly explored from both the outside and insider perspective." -- Rosalyn Baxandall, co-author of Picture Windows: How the Suburbs Happened
Annotated
"." -- Journal of Economic Literature
"Behind The Gates: Life, Security, And The Pursuit of Hapiness In Fortress America is an impressive and scholarly study of the gated communities phenomena... A fascinating social study, and very highly recommended reading for any one seriously concerned about the trend toward gated communities... [it] is a welcome and orginal contribution to American Urban Studies reference collections and supplemental reading lists." -- Wisconsin Bookwatch
"Now with the recent publication of Setha Low's Behind the Gates, we have an ethnography that focuses on the psychology of the residents themselves... In following the vogue for multi-sited ethnography, Low forsakes the detailed "thick" description of a single setting for a range of different locations: some on New York's Long Island, several others near San Antonio, Texas, and one in Mexico City. This choice turns out to be fruitful. Whatever profundity she loses from a close residential study of a bounded community is outweighed by the insights about regional difference that her research uncovers."
-- Andrew Ross, Harvard Design Magazine
"This book's combination of style, scholarship, and significance commands attention from the academic and civic communities." -- Bruce Frankel, Ball State University, Indina Magazine of History

From the Publisher

The not inconsiderable irony is that, as Low quite conclusively demonstrates, the "vigilance necessary to maintain these 'purified communities' actually heightens residents' anxiety and sense of isolation rather than making them feel safer." Inside the gates people may feel relatively safe, and they let their children play outdoors with relatively little concern for their safety, but the fear remains. The "internal freedom" of the gated community "comes at a high social and psychological cost," particularly -- or so there is reason to believe -- for children. — Jonathan Yardley

The Washington Post

Apart from their more obviously exclusionary aspects, Low finds gated communities insidiously antidemocratic and antisocial because they play into the increasing privatization of all aspects of our society. Many municipal services are now provided by homeowners' associations rather than local government, removing accountability from publicly elected officials. Provocative and disturbing, this much-needed book holds up an unsparing mirror to an unsettling sign of our times. — Martin Filler

The New York Times

Why do people move to private gated communities, and what does this mean for the enclave within the gates and for the larger society without? Inspired by an awkward visit to her sister's high-security home, Low (environmental psychology, CUNY), author of several books on the psychology of place, began to study gated communities in Long Island, San Antonio, and Mexico City. She combines field observations, interviews with residents, and personal reflection to create an unusual combination of academic research and creative nonfiction. Her interviewees are overall satisfied with their residential choices, citing security and safety, control over neighborhood composition, resale value, and reduced home maintenance workload. However, they are frequently disappointed by the lack of a sense of community. Low is highly critical of the sociocultural impacts of gating and challenges many claims about gated communities, including the beliefs that they reduce crime and replicate close-knit neighborhoods remembered from childhood. A related title is Edward J. Blakely and Mary Gail Snyder's Fortress America: Gated Communities in the United States (Brookings, 1997). Recommended for undergraduate and large public libraries and for urban planning collections.-Janet Ingraham Dwyer, Worthington Libs., OH Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal