Book review: Beyond gated communities

Gated communities have received an increasing amount of attention over the past two decades. This is unsurprising since the rate of urban densification has increased over this timespan. From the outset, it is clear that the focus of gating has shifted over time from earlier discussion of historical gating, conflict, power, law and politics, master planned estates and vertical gating to name a few. Bagaeen and Uduku set the scene by providing a discussion of how gated communities are currently viewed and go on to question what additional forms of gating may occur that affect the longer term consequences of urban living. They advise that to further understand gating the link between what happens in individual enclaves to macro level forces needs to be explored. This book challenges the reader to consider important aspects of urban gating through five lenses: new debates; structures and process; new geographies; networks, power and social relation and the future of urban gating. Through consideration of the five proposed lenses, Beyond Gated Communities soundly identified and extended the essence of gating allowing the reader to engage with new understandings of the metastasising phenomena of 'gating'.