ABSTRACT
Gated communities are the apotheosis of the lifestyle of laissez faire consumer capitalism. They are the physical embodiment of a wealth-driven, growth-oriented idyll of conspicuous consumption in which individuals indulge their own celebrity/designer-styled existence in enclaves protected from those less fortunate: the envious and excluded who can only continue to dream of somehow possessing the comforts enjoyed behind the security barriers. Now that the apocalypse is upon us, in the form of global financial meltdown, it is not merely the assumptions and practice of this economic dispensation which are ripe for re-evaluation. The gated community is a microcosm, a metaphor for the ideology and interlocking relationships, global in extent, of this bankrupt system. Unpicking the values and ideology of the gated community opens a discourse on the system which brought them into being. Examining the relationships within and beyond the gates, their meaning and implications, exposes the dysfunctions of the global system whose ethos it represents. Looking beyond the gated community points to the potential for realignment and mirrors the reorientation which is both necessary and inevitable at a global level.
