gates and walls around housing estates

Welcome to the boards, Neil.

Do you mean US-style gated communities for the rich, or gates and fences around working class housing estates?

Stacks of the gated communities have been built in inner-London in the past 5-6 years. Hackney has loads.

I suspect they originated in South Africa, but other may know more.

interestingly a recent piece of research into gated estates is saying that gating can help create sustainable communities by amongst other things protecting property prices. it also says that gating can help social inclusion, improve local environments and assist urban renewal. i have my doubts personally. There is also an issue over whether gated private estates should receive public subsidy!!

gating is an interesting issue, not least because it is not just about rich folk on exclusive estates with security gating. on council estates gating is becoming increasingly common with the gating off of "run-throughs" like entrys to tackle anti-social behaviour and the gating and security of tower blocks and sheltered housing is commonplace.

its easy to see how gating can isolate those people living inside the gates from those outside. some of the questions are is is this desireable in terms of the development of the immediate and wider community, what long term impact does it have and what happens when the residents - private or social housing - want it themselves?

i think this whole thing is fascinating (sad as i am ) because it works on so many levels, voluntary social exclusion, reactions to anti-social behaviour, interactions between people and their environment, policy development, the vested interests of the developing companies, the deals they do with city councils...

its also become a "solution" used increasingly in many countries and there is research out there although unsurprisingly i haven't found any specifically from an anarchist perspective. if you have a google for it and read some of it, it will give you some ideas to maybe develop an anarchist perspective on this.

By doing that you are alienating the communties outside. It anycase a gated communties dosen't guarantee safely from harm from a neighbour.

Anyhow the above quoted comment was probably written by the people who got most to gain from it. i.e. (£)

Er, well it is wrong if people of the same socio-economic group

are shoved together.This was one of the main reasons I became

radicalised:the fencing off of different groups.

And now they say that Muslims should integrate more?Yeah,right.

(not meant to be Islamophobic)

Wouldnt putting gates around housing estates be a chance for the government to ignore problems inside housing estates , instead of trying to solve the causes of inner city poverty, crime and drug abuse wouldnt this just be an opportunity to brush it all under the carpet , also wouldnt it also create a larger class divide than we already have, what would be next special licenses required to leave your gated housing estates, guards on the gates keeping undesirables within, instead of shutting the problems away why not ry and solve them.

well house/rent prices and access to social housing 'shove' socio-economics groups together, gating have almost nothing to do with this. I mean, the reason i don't live in a nice mansion in alderly edge isn't cos its got a gate arround it.

Well the govenerment exists to protect the causes of these problems- ie exists to proctect gross inequailty, so of course its not going to try and solve them. The reason get away with ignoring these problems is cos of lack of self-organisation and sense of despair in some areas, not cos some walkways been gated off. And if its a choice between offending the sesnability of some anarchist and a bloke from the ramblers association or taking reasonable steps to stopp people getting burgled, mugged or rubbish dumped outside there yard i can say which i go for.

but that said if you do know of working class areas surrounded by fences which are on a slippery slop to becoming internment camps hen lets us know.

Many years ago, I lived in a housing estate in Edinburgh, the local councils idea of tackling heroin abuse was to move all the smack heads into one great big block of buildings and fit high security onto the building , the junkies were overjoyed as the police couldnt gain access lol, eventually when the local council realised this wasnt working they demolished the whole scheme and gave it over to housing co operatives, slightly better idea methinks.

One of the main problems with poverty stricken estates is the fact that thewy are already isolated the people who live there tend to stick to their own areas, kids grow up and get houses in the same street as where they were brought up, they have never been taught they can escape the poverty, and all it ends up doing is perpetuating the continual drug abuse and crime which is rife within these areas, at the end of the day if you dont help yourself no other bastard is going to, gating in these communities takes away any opportunity of helping yourself to get out of the situation and I agree that the government is quite happy with this situation.

So many cities have wonderfull city centres, but where does it say in the tourist brochure.... and by the way our city is surrounded by decrepit poverty ridden slums where we imprison all the people we find undesirable.

Sounds like Stoke!

basically decribes every city in the uk, all in all it would just end up creating a larger class divide than there already is

...thus creating even more whores and coke dealers

for city types/politicians etc.

viscous circle aint it, As things stand now with the majority of poor working class families being housed in sub standard accomodation on the outskirts of the cities ( out of sight , out of mind ) this isnt new its been the norm for hundreds of years , when the lords and barons had their big fancy medieval classes where did the poor stay ... of course on the castle outskirts, all this time and things havent changed much, have they ?

But its not walls- physical barriers- that keep people in that situation. It certain case gating may add to sense of alienation. In other cases, like housing blocks with a gated off central courtyard/garden which all residents have access to it can improve the quality of their living environment, give a safe place for kids to play and create a greater sense of community.

Think alot of what your talking about has more to do with selling off of council hosuing, 'redevlopment' and gentrification, rather than gates and walls.

i don't really understand what you mean by this. you get houses in the same street as your brought up cause thats where your family and mates live and where you can afford to live. you don't escape poverty by moving house.

the big towerblocks on the estates i work on are all secure and gated. because they are people want to live in the flats. before the security and gating were there noone wanted to live there and they were basically crack dens and seriously bad places for people to be.

and slightly offtopic, what do you teach when you teach people how to escape poverty? drag yourself up by your bootlaces? it doesn't work for all but a tiny minority.

whats happening with the selloff and gentrification of inner cities and the marginalising of poorer communities out to the margins is a story of city councils selling off good land, lack of newbuild in social housing, pfi deals to create new flats for the rich urban city dweller etc etc not gating.

beggining of waffling.....the point I was trying to make was that if housing estates where povert is the norm are gated and shut off will it not demoralise the people inside these estates more than they already are, wont it take away some of their ambition to do something more for themselves or will they just settle for what they already have as their seems to be no escape, will they feel that they are just being herded into a corner and then forgotten

My point about people getting houses on the same street as where they were brought up was to try and say that because this is what they have known all their live they wont look for anything different, eg you are born , you are made to live in a cupboard under the stair by the time you are grown up what you are used to is living under the stairs and anything else seems to be alien and scary, no I dont thin k moving house will escape poverty but I also dont think staying in the same old situation and following the herd and eventually settling for what you have will change the situation. At the end of the day its not the people in the estates fault that they are poor its bad decisions and policies by governments over the years and an uncaring attitude in a coun try where the policy seems to be keep the rich rich and keep the poor poor, Gating whole communities and isolating them is not a solution.

I have no doubt that gated tower blocks are more appealing because of the security they offer, but isnt that just a cop out, wouldnt it be more like sense to tackle the problems that made these tower blocks need security, its like putting a band aid on a slashed wrist , might stop the bleeding for now but in the end the same old problems are still there. The government has to take responsibility for the problems it has caused and stop lokking for quick fixes, Yeah I know its never going to happen , ......end of waffling.

Im probably rambling and talking parp and totally missing the point, but what the hell it wont be the first time

Between WW1 and WW2 there was a wall in Oxford on a housing estate - the Cutteslowe Wall - to separate the middle class people off from the lower orders.

In Lancaster there is a really posh housing estate called Haverbreaks which is separate off from the rest of town, and I think used to have gates, and has 'keep out hoi polloi' type notices. It has one way in and one way out restricted access. I wonder what would happen if a working class council housing estate did the same kind of UDI?

In a way it could backfire though in that it turns the area into a fortress and a prison. And I fear very much in the present climate eventually Bliar or whoever comes next after him might well introduce this sort of thing in some towns to fence in the Muslim population, force them into ghettos, like the Nazis did.

There are other kinds of less physical, more subtle barriers to stop people getting into places, for example farms at the end of long broken up muddy cart tracks.

And then (slightly off the subject here) there are 'Neighbourhood Watch' schemes which some people fear as a first stage towards vigilanteism. Here in Galgate people have been suggesting setting up these. You have to pay £16 for the yellow circular sign they put up on the lamp posts, which has brought in some questions as to why it costs so much. The authorities say it is for the insurance in case it gets stolen, or falls off on somebody and injures them so they sue.