low edge and center

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M. LO WPrograms in Environmental Psychology and Anthropologyer of the City University of New Y ork

The Edge and the Center: Gated Communitiesand the Discourse of Urban Fear

Across America, middle-class and upper-middle-class gated communities are creating new forms of exclusion and resi-dential segregation, exacerbating social cleavages that already exist (Blakely and Snyder 1997; Higley 1995; Lang andDanielson 1997; Marcuse 1997). W hile historically secured and gated comm unities w ere built in the Un ited States to pro-tect estates and to contain the leisure world of retirees, these urban and suburban developm ents now target a much broadermarket, including families with children (Guterson 1992; Lofland 1998). This retreat to secured enclaves w ith walls, gates,and guards materially and symbolically contradicts American etho s and values, threatens public access to open space, andcreates yet another barrier to social interaction, building of social netw orks, as w ell as increased tolerance of diverse c ul-tural/racial/social groups (Davis 1992;Devine 1996;Etzoni 1995; Judd 1995; McKenzie 1994).

In this paper, I explore how the discourse of fear of violence and crime and the search for a secure com munity by tho sewho live in gated communities in the United States legitimates and rationalizes class-based exclusion strategies and resi-dential segregation. I examine w hether residents of cities experiencing increasing cultural diversity are fleeing neighb or-hoods because they have experienced a "loss of place" and therefore feel unsafe and insecure (Altaian and Low 1992).Some people are responding to this loss by choosing to buy into a defensive space, a walled and guarded community thatthey can call hom e, [gated comm unities, United States, urban fear]

ontemporary anthropological studies of the city fo-cus predominantly on the center, producing eth-nographies of culturally significant places such as

These studies illuminate both the material and

s this tendency by sorting research ers into separate dis-

1 So

why residents choose to live there provides an importantperspec tive on the central city that is often overlooked.For a majority of Americans the distance from suburb tocity, or from work to home, is maintained through a com-plex social discourse. Anti-urban sentiment is often ex-pressed as fear of violence and crime that is said to pervadethe city. Within gated communities, though, the intensityof the discourse of urban fear suggests other underlying so-cietal explanations. In this study, I explore the com plex in-terconnections between this discourse, loss of a sense ofplace, and increasing class sep aration. I suggest that addingwalls, gates, and guards produces a landscape that encodesclass relations and residential (race/class/ethnic/gender)segregation more permanently in the built environment(Low 1997). Understanding how this landscape is legiti-mated by a discourse of fear of crime and violence h elps touncover how this design form is materially and rhetoricallycreated.I use thematic content analysis to document the exist-ence of urban fear in its many forms and its influence onresidents' residential narratives. Critical discourse analysisprovides a complementary methodology for decoding talkabout urban fear as an acceptable, socially con structed d is-course about class exclusion and racial/ethnic/cultural bias.The use of urban fear discourse reinforces residents' claims


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A M E R I C A N A N T H R O P O L O G I S T V O L . 1 0 3 , N o . 1 M A R C H 20 0 1

rs" that lurk ou tside.Unlocking the Gated Com munity

stimates of the number of people who live in gated

omes b uilt in the United States in recent years are in, and in areas such as Tam pa, Florida, w here crime is

ve hom e sales of $300,000 or m ore (Fischler 1998).Systems of walls and class division are deeply ingrainedc Europe as a means of wealthy people protecting

ve walls ceased to exist (King 1990).At the turn of the twentieth century, secured and gatedunities in the United States were built to protect fam-

evelopments. In the 1980s, real estate speculation ac-designed for exclusivity, prestige, and leisure. This

(Donahue 1993), and feature articlesNew Y ork Times (Fischler 1998).

1980s. Since the late 198 0s, gates have becom e ubiq-y and Sny der 1997).literature on gated comm unities identifies a number

ixture of conser-

power, wealth, and income toward the richest portions ofthe population (Phillips 1991). W hile the inco me share ofthe upper 20% of Am ericans rose from 41.6% to 44 % from1980 to 1988, the average after-tax income of the lowestten percent dropped 10.5% from 1977 to 1987 (Phillips1991), producing a two-class system of "h ave s" and "have-nots" based on these structural readjustments to late capi-talism (Mollenkopf andCastells 1991).Mike Davis (1990, 1992) argues that the creation ofgated comm unities, and the addition of guardho uses, w alls,and entrance gates to established neighbo rhood s, is an inte-gral part of the building of the "fortress city." He identifiesthe so-called militarization of Los A ngeles as a strategy forcontrolling and patrolling the urban poor that is made up ofpredominantly ethnicLatino and Blackminorities.2Susan Fainstein adds that large development projects incities like New York and London produce this built envi-ronment by forming:

contours which structure social relations, causing commonali-ties of gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, and class toassume spatial identities. Social groups, in turn, imprint them-selves physically on the urban structure through the formationof communities, competition for territory, and segrega-tionin other words, through clustering, the erection ofboundaries, and establishing distance. [1994:1]The political and economic democratic practices medi-ating some forms of class separation in the United States,however, are not found in Brazil (Caldeira 1996; Carvalho1997), other parts of Latin America (Low 1996), or SouthAfrica (Western 1981) where gated condominiums andfortified enclaves are omnipresent. Teresa Caldeira exam-ines Sao Paulo's economic transformation from 1940through the 1980s that resulted in increased violence, inse-curity, and fear, such that Sao Paulo became a "city ofwa lls" (1999:87). Through field visits, I have observed theuse of w alls, gates, locks, and guards by the upper and mid-dle classes in Nairobi, Accra, Dakar, M exico C ity, and Ca-racas to protect residents from assault and property crimeand/or the consequences of political upheaval (Low n.d.).Although the cross-cultural examples of gating appearsimilar, their histories and attributed causation vary tre-mendously: from racism in South Africa, to property van-dalism in Accra, kidnapping and robbery in Mexico City,and carjacking and homicide in Nairobi.3The processes that produce urban and suburban separa-tion in the United S tates also hav e a long history based onracism and racial segregation. Blacks in U.S. cities con-tinue to experience a high level of residential segregationbased on discriminatory real estate practices and mortgagestructures designed to insulate Whites from Blacks (Bul-lard and Lee 1994; Massey and Denton 1988). Nancy Den-

ton (1994) argues that since the 1980s there has been a pat-tern of hyper-segregation in the suburbs, reinforced bypatterns of residential mobility by race in that Blacks are


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Low / THE EDGE AND THE CENTER 47s likely to move to the suburbs in the firstplace, and thenlikely to return to the city (South and Crowd er 1997).Sally Merry found that middle-class and upper-middle-

xpanded its regulatory r o l e . . . . Zoning laws, local po-

. In this issue, M erry argues that the regulation of

ment to disciplinary penalty, and that this new spa-

and policing, implemented by zoning lawsd regulations, and subsidized by businesses and banks.The suburb as an exclusionary enclave where upper-

status, and security in an ideal "new town" or "greenreinforces these patterns (Langdon 1994; McKenzieLand speculation beginning with the street car sub-of Philadelphia accelerated the growth of new m iddle-ss enclaves (Jackson 1985). The expanding suburbs of, and 1970s generated "white flight" from

The development of common interest developments

ibes "a comm unity in which the residents own or con-h it reciprocal righ ts and ob ligations enforced by a pri-

wner associations" (McKenzie 1994).The "pod" and "enclave" suburban designs further re-op suburban environm ents w here people of different in-

ittle to no contact w ith one another (Langdon 1994).

pe aesthetics function as suburban politics of exclusion,

tempt to dereg ulate their rigidlycontrolled environ-

The psychological lure of defended space becomesmore enticing with increased media coverage and nationalhysteria about urban crime (Flusty 1997; Judd 1995).News stories chronicle daily murders, rapes, drive-byshootings, drug busts, and kidnapping. An ever-growingproportion of people fear that they will be victimized, suchthat the fear of crime has increased since the mid-1960seven though there has been a decline in all violent crimesince the 1980s (Colvard 1997; Judd 1995; Stone 1996).Violent crime (homicide, robbery, sexual assault, and ag-gravated assault) fell 12% nationally between 1994 and1995, while property crime (burglary, theft, and auto theft)declined 9% (Brennan and Zelinka 1997).

Barry Glassner (1999) points out that we are inundatedwith m edia reports about the prevalence of crime and vio-lence creating a "culture of fear." But when the actualcrime statistics are consulted, the reality is never as grim ordevastating as the newspaper and television portrayal. Forexample, parents are overwhelmed by the amount of m ediaattention given to child abduction and cyberporn. A Timearticle estimating that more than 800,000 children are re-ported missing every year perpetuated a national panic(Glassner 1999:61). According to Glassner, three out offour parents in a national survey said they fear their childwill be kidnapped by a stranger. Criminal justice experts,however, estimate that only 200 to 300 children a year areabducted by non-family members and kept for long peri-ods of time or murdered, while 4,600 (of 64 million chil-dren) are abducted and then returned. He makes the pointthat reporters overstate the actual threat to add drama, con-vince an editor, or justify more extensive m edia coverage.His answer to why Am ericans harbor so m any fears is that"immense power and money await those who tap into ourmoral insecurities and supply us with symbolic substi-tutes" (Glassner 1999:xxviii).

There has been considerable research that links fear ofcrime to the physical environment. A lthough none of it fo-cuses specifically on gated communities, it suggests howcommunities and individuals deal with fear within the con-text of a local neighborhood. Urban ethnograph ies suggestthat familiarity, avoidance, and surveillance play importantroles in allaying these fears. Sally Merry (1982) d ocumen tsthe interactions and perceptions of Black, W hite, and Ch i-nese residents in a high-rise, low-income project in a largeNortheastern city and concludes that lack of familiarityplays an important role in the perception of danger. Eli An-derson (1990) documents avoidance as a coping strategy inhis study of "streetwise" behavior of Philadelphians inwhich residents cross the street when faced with oncom ingyoung Black males. Philippe Bourgois (1995) dramatizesthe fear and sense of vulnerability experienced by residentsof El Barrio and depicts their strategies of avoidance andsurveillance used to deal with street crime. These studiesdescribe how fear is spatially managed in urban contexts,


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AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST VOL . 1 0 3, NO . 1 MARCH 20 01

iddle-income people to mitigate their fears.

(1972) who brought thention of the pub lic. He argues that the reason high-rise

greater safety and higher house values as long as

the phrase "crime prevention through

tion and review of neighbor-

planning solutions such as pod and enclave develop-

ty and cu ltural m etaphor.

fear about the future of Am erica.ny feel v ulnerab le, unsure of their place and the stability ofne ig hb or ho od s.. .. This is reflected in an increasing fear

on of walled cities and gated comm unities is aa new fortress mentality growing in

Methodology

a culturally diverse city with publicized

are known for their multiculturalism, cultural inclusive-ness, as well as interethnic conflicts resulting from rapidchanges in neighborhood com position. Both cities have in-creasing socioeconomic disparities, a history of residentialsegregation, and a documented movement of middle-classresidents moving to an ever widening outer ring of sub-urbs. They also provide excellent comparative cases be-cause of differences between them in (1) population sizeand density, (2) history of gated community development,(3) scale and design of the gated communities, (4) legaland governm ental structure, (5) crime rates for the region,and (6) cultural context and norms of behavior. Because ofthe complexity and size of New York City, I use Queens,the outer borough adjacent to the study site, to describe thecultural context, population size, and crime statistics rele-vant to this analysis. Many of the residents cited in this arti-cle moved from Queens to their gated com munity.San Antonio is a medium-size city with an estimatedpopulation of 1,464,356 inhabitants in 1995. The city be-gan in the eighteenth century as a cohesion of differentSpanish missions and has retained much of its Mexican-Spanish heritage. Since 1990, Texas has accounted for14% of all new jobs created in the United States, includingrapid growth in high-tech manufacturing causing laborshortages of highly trained workers. Popu lation growth inthe Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA)4 grew 21.5%from 1980 to 1990 and an additional 10.1% from 1990 to1994 (Ame rica's Top-Rated Cities 1997). This increase inskilled jobs and numbers of residents stimulated construc-tion of new middle-class suburbs and a downtown renova-tion project known as Riverwalk. It was in San Antoniothat I first gained entrance to a number of homes locatedwithin a locked, gated, and w alled comm unity on the out-skirts of the city and found young, white, middle-classteenagers discussing their fear of "Mexicans" who livenearby.San Antonio's high rates of crime7,993.9 crimes per100,000 in the city com pared to 3,906.3 per 100,000 in thesuburbs in 1995occur in poorer, urban neighborhoodsand no t in the suburban areas (U .S. Department of Justice1995). In 1995, murder occurred almost four times morefrequently in the city than in the suburbs14.2 per100,000 com pared to 3.7 per 100,000; robberies occurredmore than five times more frequently 234.5 per 100,000compared to 42.4 per 100,000. Nevertheless, suburbanresidents feel afraid. T hey read abou t kidnapping' anddrive-by shootings, or they hear stories from their friendsof burglaries in the suburbs. One resident called it a "crimemovement" at one point in the interviewan interestingcomm entary that captures the "wa ves of cri me" reported inSan Anton io's only newspaper, the San Antonio Express-News.

New York City, in com parison to San Antonio, is aglobal city of more than 7 million inhabitants. Located on theeastern seaboard, New York C ity has been a major entryway


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Low / THE EDG E AND THE CENTER 4 9

e spoken (Sanjek 1998). Queens became incorpo-ork City in 1897, linked by both the Long

With a population of 1,966,685 in 1997, it providesr comparison to San Antonio because of its scale andy to Long Island suburbs.

l, residential, or office spaceas well as lower salaries

ing for at least 10% of private sector job s in 1998, itice sector as the rest of New Y ork City (McCall 2000).r, in the early 1990s, higher paying jobs were beingffering lower average salaries (McCall 2000 ).

Nassau County, Long Island, on the other hand, experi-enced a resurgence of residential development, some of itgated, following the decline of the real estate market in theearly 1990s. With a population of 1,298,842 in 1997, Nas-sau County abuts the eastern boundary of Queens and pro-vides a suburban comparison for the analysis of crime sta-tistics.Crime rates have fallen much faster around New YorkCity than in the nation. From 1990 to 1995, violent crimehad dropped 44 .4% in New York City compared to a 6.5%drop for the nation as a whole. But the rate of violent crim eis still double the national average, with 1,324 violentcrimes per 100,000 for New York City and 685 violentcrimes per 100,000 for the United States reported in 1996(New York Times 1997). Property crime has experienced asimilar drop with a decline of 47% in New York City com -pared to 9.7% for the nation from 1990 to 1995 (New YorkTimes 1997). Urban crime rates, though, are still higherthan those in the suburbs. For example, in 1997 the totalnumber of crimes of all types was 95,751 for Queens witha population of 1,966,685 compared to 29,770 for NassauCounty w ith a population of 1,298,842about double 5 inthe city compared to the suburb. For violent crim es, such asmurder, the difference is even greater with 207 murders inQueens and 26 murders in Nassau County reported in 1997(National Archive of Criminal Justice Data 1997).New suburban housing developments with surroundingwalls and restrictive gates located approximately thirtyminutes drive from their respective downtown city hallswere selected at the edge of each city. Single-family house

Figure 1. Gated entry.


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AMER ICAN ANT HRO POLO GIST VOL . 103 . No . 1 MA RCH 2001

Fig ure 2 , Walls and wide streets. Author on-site.om $650,000 to $880,000 in New York andntonio in 1995.6 Each gated

by a five- to six-foot m a-

ntonio) (Figure 1).The New York development is situated on an old estate

an acre. The remaining property is land-te a park-like atmosph ere. Since the commu-

Not all the lots have been purchased, and houses are stillbeing built.The San Antonio gated community is part of a muchlarger northern suburban development centered on a pri-vate golf and tennis club with swimming pools, restaurant,and clubhouse. The subdivision includes 120 lots, a fewfronting one section of the golf course, surrounded by asix-foot masonry wall (Figure 2). The main entrance iscontrolled by a grid-design gate that swings opens elec-tronically by a hand transmitter or by a guard who is con-tacted by an intercom and video camera connection. Thebroad entrance road divides into two sections leading to aseries of short streets ending in cul-de-sacs. The houses aremostly large (3,500-5,500 square feet), two-story brickColonials or stucco Scottsdale designs (Figure 3) with afew one-story brick ranch-style houses. More than two-thirds of the houses have been built and occupied, whilethe remaining lots are currently un der construction.Research Design and Specific Methods

Field methods included open-ended interviews withresidents, participant-observation within and around the


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Lo w / TH I . ED C I AND mi ; CI .NTI .R 51

Figure 3. Scottsdale-style house.communities, interviews with key informants such as thedevelopers and real estate agents, and the collection ofmarketing, sales, and advertising documents. An un-structured interview guide was developed to elicit resi-dents' decision-making p rocesses concerning their moveto the gated community. The research team 7 collectedfield notes and interviews in the New York area, while Iworked alone in San Antonio. The interviews lasted be-tween one to two hours, depending on whether the inter-viewer was taken on a tour of the house. We did not askto be taken on a tour, but many tim es interview ees of-fered, and we used the tour to learn more about the per-son's tastes, interests, and preferences.It was difficult to obtain entry into these communitiesand to contact residents. A sales manager in the gatedcommunity outside of New York City helped by con-tacting two residents she thought would be willing tospeak with us. We then used introductions either fromhe sales manager or from other interviewees to com-esident provided entree by contacting two residents;

Opportunities for participant-observation were limited,but it was possible to talk with people w hile they were ex -ercising or walking their dogs, attending homeowner andclub meetings, and participating in neighborhood celebra-tions. Further, spending time in the local comm ercial areas shopping, going to restaurants, and visiting real estateagentsprovided other contexts for learning about every-day life.Open-ended, unstructured interviews were conductedin the home w ith the wife, husban d, or husband and wifetogether over a three-year period from 1995 to 1998.The majority of the interviewees were European Ameri-cans and native born, however, three interviews were inhouseholds where one spouse was born in Latin Amer-ica, one interviewee was born in the South Pacific, andone interviewee's spouse was born in the Middle East.Interviewees were aged 27 through 75; all husbandswere either professionals such as doctors or lawyers,businessmen, or retired from these same pursuits. Inmost cases the wives remained at home, while the hus-band commuted to his place of work. A few womenworked part-time.


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AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOG IST VO L. 103, No. 1 M ARCH 2001

The ethnographic analysis of participant-observations in the local environment. Further, it produced data

re coded by the themes that emerged d uring the research

A thematic content analysis of the interviews and docu-

ere coded based on them es identified in the in-the data. De-on the numb er and specificity of the themes, they

bering, calculation of percentages) of the ex-

A c ritical discourse analysis of the 20 interviews iden ti-ed covert concerns with social order, social control, xeno-

and violence, and overt expressions of a desire for ahom e, beautiful setting, and sense of comm unity. Fol-g Fairclough (1995), I assume that language is a formractice that is historically situated and dialecticalsocially shaping. Since language is widely per-

es, reproduces, and transforms social structures and

and the relationship of politics to methodology also in-forms my analysis.Nineteen of the twenty interviews were transcribed infull.8 Nex t, I read through the interview tran scripts and sys-tematically noted all instances in which the covert con-cerns (see above) were discussed or alluded to. This proc-ess produced the body of the data set. In the final stage, Iidentified different strategies used to talk about living in agated community. The details of the linguistic construc-tions w ith their imm ediate functions produ ced an outline ofthe ideological structure of the conv ersation. T he goal wasnot to quantify the occurrence of particular themes or rhe-torical strategies, but, more importantly, to illustrate theirsituated effects (D ixon and Reicher 1997:368)The Sea rch for Safety a nd Security

A majority of interviewees perceive an increase of thecrime in their urban neighborhoo ds before moving to agated community. Eighteen of the twenty interviews in-clude discussions of residents' search for a sense of safetyand security in their choice of a gated com mun ity, and theirrelief upon settling in that they did feel safer and more se-cure w ith the addition of gates, walls, and guards. Many in-terviewees mention changes in social composition of thesurrounding areas as a primary m otivation for moving, andthe loss of local amenities, particularly in the New Yorkarea. Interviewees also talk about the investment value ofthe house, the status implications of their move, and theirneed for more space and privacy, but these concerns arenot examined in this analysis.One n oteworthy finding is that once a person lives in agated com mu nity, they say that they would always choosea gated com mun ity again, even if safety w as not the basisof their initial decision. Three of the twenty intervieweeshad lived previously in gated developments: one familylived in Latin A merica where they enjoyed the security of agated and guarded compound; one family retired first inFlorida w here m ost retirement comm unities are gated; andone newly married w oman had lived in a gated condomin-ium complex. These couples did not even consider a non-gated com munity when looking for a new home.New York

Nine of the ten interviewees in New York mention ur-ban crim e as a major reason for selecting a gated commu-nity. The tenth interviewee, although she says that crimeand safety had no bearing on why they moved, mentionsthat in her old neighborhood her car had been stolen fromoutside her door.Nine of the ten interviewees are from the local area andmoved from New York City or a nearby Long Island urbancenter. Many are quite vocal about the changes that theyexperienced in their original neighborhoods. For instance,


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Low / THE EDGE AND THE CENTER 53

ghborhood deterioration left he r feeling uncomfort-ty-five years. Even though she knew everyone in herneighborhood and enjoyed walking to the corner store,

s m oved out and Kmart moved in, it justught in a different group of people . . . and it wasn 't thefe place that it w a s . . . . I think it's safer having a gated com-ty They are not going to steal my car in the garage. . . .

d next door and their car w as stolen twice.d her husb and A lvin exp ress it differently:

[Our old neighborhood was] a very, very educatedity. You know so every one goes on to college, and itamily, and you know, it's just a wonderful

It's ethnic changes.Yeah, ethnic changes, that's a very good way of putting i tAnd is this something that started to happenrecently?In the last, probably, seven to eight years.ghborhood. At first she did not want to live in a house atsince she would feel afraid being alone. She had grown

they had been robbed. H er childhood home had beennice neighborhood where thieves knew they could finde things to steal:And then I have a lot of friends w ho live in a neigh-

year and a half. And I said to myself, those areh security and dogs and this and th at ...And are they gated?No, they're not gated. They had alarms, and theyting robbed because they were cutting the alarms, theires outside. So I'm saying to myself, all this is in myand I'm s ayin g... I can get robbe d That*s why I m o v e d . .hanging: she was having problems finding a place to

night. Heren. Her husband began to travel a lot, and she could notompany her husband on his trips because she w as wor-

ided to m ove to a gated commu nity that would provide

es and parking p roblem s. As she put it:

I got to feel like I was a prisoner in the ho u se .. .. You didn'tpark on the street too long because you are afraid your car isgoing to be missing something when you get out, or the wholecar is mi ssin g... . So there's a lot of things we have the free-dom here to do that we didn't do be for e....Helen comments that it was "very nice at night to comein . . . and to have a gate and there's only one entrance to

the property, so I think that makes for possibly less robber-ies. . . . " For her, safety is:not a main concern, but a concern. Otherwise, if I boughtsomething ... on two acres of land, I would have been veryuncomfortable there . . . no children around . . . jus t beingalone now in the dark .. . and my husband would get homelater. I just did n't w ant to be surrounded by tw o acres of land.She has friends (in the old neighborhoo d) w ho w ere bur-glarized and had become more distressed. She feels theguards at the entrance are not careful, but it is still difficult

for thieves to escape. Her mother and h er children also livein gated comm unities.San An tonio

Nine of the interviewees in San Antonio mention crimeand a fear of "others" as a reason for moving. Stay-at-hom emothers like Felicia and Donna worry ab out threats to theirchildren. Felicia states her feelings about h er fear of crim eand other people very clearly:Setha: ... has it changed how you feel about being in thegated community?Felicia: Yes. It allows a lot more freedom for my daugh ter togo outside and play. We're in San Antonio, and I believe thewhole country knows how many child kidnappings we'vehad.... And I believe that my husband would not ever allowher outside to play without direct adult supervision unless w ewere gated. It allows us freedom to w alk at night, if we chooseto . It has, you know , it does have a flip side.Se th a: What flip side?Felicia: Several things. First of all, it's a false sen se of safety ifyou think about it, because our security people are not"Johnny-on-the-spot," so to speak, and anybody who wants tojump the gate could jump the g at e. .. . There's a perception ofsafety that may not be real, that could potentially leave onemore vulnerable if there was ever an attack.

* * *

Setha: Who lives in your comm unity?Felicia: People who are retired and don't want to maintainlarge yards.... People who want to raise families in a moreprotected environment [long pause].Setha: What do you mean by that?Felicia: There are a lot of families w ho have, in the last coupleof years, after we built, as the crime rate, or the reporting ofthat crime rate, has become such a prominen t part of the new sof the community, there's been a lot of "fear flight" I've men-tioned that people w ho were building or going to build based


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AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST VOL . 103, No. 1 MARCH 2001

on wanting to get out of the very exclusive subdivisions with-out a gate, solely for the ga te.Setha: Really. There h as bee n?Felicia: Oh, yeah. I was telling you about a family that wasshopping [for a house in Felicia's gated community] becausethey had been randomly robbed many times.* * *

Felicia: When I leave the area entirely and go downtown [lit-tle laugh], I feel quite threatened, just being out in normal ur-ban areas, unrestricted urban areas.... Please let me explain.The no rth central pa rt of this city, by and large, is middle classto upper middle class. Period. There are very few pockets ofpoverty. Very few. And the refore if you go to any store, you willlook around and m ost of the clientele will be middle class asyou are yourself. So you are som ewhat insulated. But if you godowntown, which is much m ore mixed, where everybody goes,I feel much more thre atened.Setha: Okay.Felicia: My daughter feels very threatened when sh e sees poorpeople.Setha: How do you explain that?Felicia: She hasn't had enough exposure. We were drivingnext to a truck with some day laborers and equipment in theback, and we were parked beside them at the light. She wantedto move because she was afraid those people were going tocome and get her. They looked scary to her. I explained thatthey were workmen, they're the "backbone of our country,"they're coming from work, you know, b u t. ..Donna's concerns with safety also focus on her childhis reactions to the city. Sh e, like Felicia, is aware that

Donna: You know, he's always so scared.... It has made aworld of difference in him since we've been out here.Setha: Really?Donna: A world of difference. And it is that sen se of securitythat they don't think people are roaming the neighborhoodsand the streets and that there's people out there that can hurthim.Setha: A h .. . that's incredible.Donna: . . . T hat's what's been most important to my husband,to get the children out here where they can feel safe, and wefeel safe if they could go out in the s treets and no t worry thatsomeone is going to grab them.... We feel so secure andmaybe that's wrong too.Setha: In what sense?Donna: You know, we've got w orker s out here, and we stillthink "oh, they're safe out here" In the other neighborhoodI never let him get out of my sight for a minute. Of course theywe re a little bit young er too, but I just, would never, you know,think of letting them go to the n ext s treet over. It would havescared me to death, because you didn't know. There was somuch traffic coming in and out, you never knew who w as cruis-ing the stre et and how fast they can grab a child. And I don'tfeel that way in our area at a ll .. . ever.Other San Antonio interviewees are less dramatic in ex-

on taxation and the quality of the security system andguards. Harry and his wife feel tha t the bigge st differencewith gating is "not just anyone can come by." They aremore upset about the way that the government'treats pri-vate gated communities in terms of taxation. Karen wasnot even looking for a place in a secured area:Karen: It was just by accident tha t it was [gated] But afterliving here, if we moved it would be different.Setha: And why is that?Karen: Because after seeing .. . this is a very nice neighbor-hood and after seeing that there are so many beautiful neigh-borhoo ds here and in other parts of the country that are not ina secure area, that's where burglary and murders take place,not here, because it's an open door [there] ... come on [in].Why should they try to do anything here when they can gosomewhere elsefirst?It's a strong deterrent, ne edless to say.Other residents are not so su re that the gates are an ade-quate deterrent. Edith talks about her problems with the se-curity guards who supposedly patrol at night and monitor

the gates w ith security cam eras. She feels the guards do notdo their job. Another interviewee points out that with anygate monitored by a security camera and a guard in a re-mote station, two cars can enter at the same time creatingan unsafe situation.There seems to be no end to residents' concern withsafety and security. In both New York and San Antonio,most residents have burglar alarms they keep armed evenwhen home during the day.Critical Discourse Analysis F indings

In order to get at underlying social values, I selected sec-tions of the interviews that refer to "others" (see Feliciaand Barbara and Alvin excerpts presented abo ve). I am try-ing to get at wh at Michael B illig calls "the dialogic uncon-sciou s," a concept by which the processes of repression canbe studied discursively (1997:139). I assume mat some ofthe evidenc e I am look ing for is "rep ressed," that it is hid-den not only from the interviewer, because it is sociallyunacceptab le to talk about class and race, but from the in-terviewee as well because these concerns are also psycho-logically unacceptable. According to Billig (1997), con-versational interaction can have repressive functions aswell as expressive ones, so what is said can be used to getat wh at is not said.Using John Dixon and Steve Reicher's article "IntergroupContact and Desegregation in the New South Africa" as amodel, I focus on the rhetorical dimension of intergroupcontact to elicit narratives about maintaining , justifying, orchallenging racist (or elitist) practices (19 97:3 68-3 69). Forinstance, Dixon and Reicher identify a number of "dis-claiming statements" about their interviewees' racist atti-tudes they were able to elicit by asking their respondentsabout their new Black neighbo rs in a legalized squatter set-tlement. In the interviews, similar questions were asked,


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Low / TH E EDG E AND THE CENTER 55t "Mexican lab orers" in San Antonio or "recent immi-

For instance, after a long discussion identifying midd le-

of our country." Her disclaim-

ve goals.Another example of disclaiming occurs when the hus-

changes," to characterize the m ore elusive transfor-ns that he w as trying to ge t at.In a recent presentation, Co llette Daiute (2000) suggestsre are five ways to interrogate a narrative: (1) as re -

ted discursive goals of the interviewees. For instance,

r own understanding: "so I'm saying to myself, all this innd, and I'm sa y in g .. .. I can get robbed," and posi-

o are vulnerable to robberies).Discussion

In New York, residents are fleeing deteriorating urbanmes, concluding that the neighborhood is "just not w hat9 New Yorkers cite changes in the local

number of "break-ins."The intensity of the language and underlying social dis-se seems m ore intense in San Antonio. As a younger,

spatial segregation than the older boroughs and Long Is-land suburbs of New York City. As Felicia explains, resi-dents of the northern outskirts of San Antonio are physi-cally insulated from the poorer sections of the city. In NewYork City this kind of spatial and social insulation is muchharder to achieve. Nonetheless, in both cities, residentsmove to gated communities based on what Felicia calls"fear flight," the desire to protect oneself, family, and prop -erty from dangers perceived as overwhelming them. Yetgating offers a kind of incomplete boundedness10 in thatworkers from feared groups enter to work for residents,and residents themselves need to leave to sho p."Whether it is kidnapping or bike snatching, M exican la-borers or "ethnic changes," the message is the same: resi-dents are using the walls, entry gates, and guards in an ef-fort to keep the perceived dangers outside of their homes,neighborhoods, and social world. The physical distancebetween them and the "others" is so close that contact in-cites fear and concern, and in response they are construct-ing exclusive, private, residential developments wherethey can keep other people out with guards and gates. Thewalls are making visible the systems of exclusion that arealready there, now con structed in concrete.

ConclusionsFrom these interviews there appears to be a wealth ofdata about fear of crime, increased social diversity, andneighborhood ch ange. Residents talk about their fear of thepoor, the workers, the "M exicans," and the "new comers,"as well as their retreat behind walls where they think theywill be safe. But there is fear even behind the walls. As thetwo mothers from San Antonio po int out, there are workerswho enter the community everyday, and they must go outin order to buy groceries, shop, or see a movie. The gatesprovide some protection, but they would still like more. Iwonder what "more" would be? Even though the gates andguards exclude the feared "others" from living with them,"they" can slip by the gate, follow your car in, crawl overthe wall, or worse, the guard can fall asleep or be a criminal

himself. Informal conversations about the screening ofguards and how they are hired, as w ell as discussions aboutincreasing the height and length of the protective walls asnew threats appear, are frequent in the locker room of thehealth club, on the tennis court, and during strolls in thecommunity in the evening. What would be the next step inthis progression?In this paper, I have not considered why developers arebuilding gated communities, yet even without an analysisof marketing strategies, the allure of the gated com mun ityis clear. Even residents who did not select the communityfor its gates now would only live behind protective walls.Further, during the day residents are primarily wom en whodo not work. Is the gated comm unity creating new patternsof gendering in these spaces? What about the men who go


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AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST VOL. 103, No. 1 MARCH 2001

o, Texas, in 1998 (Durrington 1999)? Will the walls

This paper suggests that the discourse of urban fear en-clusivity as well as gender.12 It provides a verbal

the inhabitants with the ideo-the social construction and social production of

13Urban fear, and its relationship to new forms of social

, needs to be better understood in the context of thethe center, played out in an

NotesAcknowledgments. Funding from the Wenner-Gren Foun-

for Anthropological Research and from the Researchof the City University of New York made this re-

I would like to thank Joel Lefkowitz,

for their contributions to this project. Ito thank my co-researchers Elena Danaila,and Mariana Diaz-Wionczek. Elena Danaila

on the analysis of theseto my formulation of

the theoretical ideas presented here. I, however, am solelyfor the conclusions. An earlier version of this pa-er waspresented as the Class of 1905 lecture at Bryn Mawr

and at the American Anthropological Association an-in Chicago.

1. Kristin Koptiuch contributed this idea during a discus-of this paper at the American Anthropological Associa-

in Chicago. I greatly appreciate her shar-2. I would like to thank Ivelisse Rivera-Bonilla for linking

of militarization to the racial/ethnic seg-of Los Angeles.

3. These observations are based on visits to each of theseand brief interviews with either experts or residents.

data m ust still be collected. I am currently analyzing ten inter-views collected in a gated community in Mexico City.4. Includes unincorporated suburbs.5. When the crime rates are adjusted for population, theyare 43/1000 for Queens vs. 22/1000 for Nassau County.6. The disparity in prices reflects the considerable differ-ences in the housing markets rather than any substantive dif-ferences in socioecono mic status and quality of life of the resi-dents or the nature of the homes.7. The research team was made up of Elena Danaila, agraduate student in Environmental Psychology, and SuzanneScheld, a graduate student in Anthropology, and the PI.8. One interview could not be fully transcribed because ofproblems with the tape recording. The transcribed portion wasused whenever possible, otherwise we relied on the field notesof the interview. All interviews were recorded and field noteswere taken as a precaution.9. Ivelisse Rivera-B onilla (1999 ) makes the distinction be-tween "neighborhood" and "comm unity" because one doesn'tnecessarily imply the other. She comments that in the gatedresidents' narratives about their former neighborhoods theytalk about the corner store, yet when they talk about their pre-sent surroundings they seem to refer more to their immediatefamilies rather than their neighbors and community. Thiscould be because the gated communities are relatively new,and to answer this question they m ust be examined over time.10. I would like to thank one of the reviewers of this articlefor suggesting that the boundedness is incomplete.11 . Kevin Birth suggests that looking at the ethnic back-grounds of the home health care w orkers, groundskeep ers, andnannies in the gated communities might tell something moreabout how often residents encounter non-Whites in their every-day lives.

12 . Kevin Birth also suggests that age may play a role instructuring these comm unities, especially the age of those whoare feared.13. I would like to thank one of the reviewers of this articlefor pointing out the strength of the verbal and visual compo-nents reinforcing on e another in this setting.References Cited

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