ABSTRACT
There is hardly another form of urban development that has received so much public attention since the late 1990s as privately organised, and often secured, housing developments. In the media, in urban social science, as well as in politics and urban planning, there is a lively and controversial debate on the spread of private forms of urban governance. The vigour of the discussion is not surprising given that the enclosure of urban neighbourhoods brings into sharp relief fundamental social questions about private versus public organisation of civic goods and services, the right to a secure environment versus the right to access, communal versus individual consumption, inclusion versus exclusion, heterogeneity versus homogeneity and efficiency versus equity. The debates that have emerged around these issues show that discussions on urban questions are in the end discussions about the society we would like to live in.
