don't fence us out

A look at why protesters see an innocuous-looking gate off Grafton Street as a threat to society

by Chris Kanaracus

On an unseasonably warm October day, the gate outside Wexford Village looks as innocuous as a hurricane fence around a Vernon Hill three-decker. Cars must stop briefly to swipe a passcard through an electronic lock, but pedestrians can freely walk in by means of a concrete sidewalk.

No homes that comprise the village are visible from the street, due to the to-and-fro curves of the complex's main road, but plenty of residents are. They gather just beyond the gate, some with their arms crossed tightly on their chests as they pace in tight circles. Just after one o'clock, any confusion over their agenda is suddenly quelled. A procession of roughly 20 people, mostly teens and young adults, marches up nearby Dalton Street and apprehensively takes its places around the gate.

The protesters represent the Coalition for a Healthy Worcester (CHW), a group formed to spark debate over the issue of gated communities. Many in the group bear signs that proclaim things like "Neighborhoods Not Fortresses," "Free Wexford," "We Want You Back In Our Community," and "Come Find Out Why Gates Are Bad."

Group organizers Nicholas Reveille and Holmes Wilson each take up one side of the gates. They hand out literature to curious passersby and converse with residents. Their manner is calm and respectful -- the same can't be said for several members of their opposition. One middle-aged resident sticks his head out of the window of a shiny black sport-utility vehicle and nearly shouts, "Don't you people have anything better to do on a Sunday afternoon?"

It's a question many residents ask of the protesters, perhaps most vocally by Connie Roche, a 67-year-old retiree who says the gate gives her a sense of security. "People have security on their cars, why not on their property? I don't understand the basis for this [protest]." She motions toward the protesters with a jerk of her thumb and says, "Why don't they do something worthwhile with their lives?"

"I'd like to know what their problem is. They'd be better off helping those people out in Honduras and Nicaragua, than something as ridiculous as this," says Mary King, a representative of the Flatley Company, which developed Wexford Village 20 years ago but installed the metal gate about two years ago.

Reveille and Wilson, in fact, agree with the notion that their action this October day could easily be seen as ridiculous. Ridiculous, that is, without benefit of knowledge of the larger picture. Not only they, but a growing number of sociologists -- backed by compelling statistics -- say that the explosive growth of gated communities is a national phenomenon, and one that greatly threatens the social structure and health of our nation's cities.

Worcester long has had exclusive housing developments (such as Salisbury Estates, located near the Holden line), but Wexford Village is the first one with a locked gate. Reveille and Wilson say that such gates fragment a community, isolating the population into small, insular groups. This reduced level of contact with the city, they argue, can lead to disinterest in civic involvement. Maybe just as important, many gates are largely ineffective as security measures and are quite possibly marketing ploys by developers who aim to capitalize on the public's fear of urban crime. (To this end, they question why Wexford Village, which is located in a safe, quiet, upper Grafton Street neighborhood, needs a gate at all.)

Though Worcester may not have a problem with gated communities right now, Reveille and Wilson contend, it could in the future. "We started this [CHW] now to raise people's awareness early on. Once the gates are up, they'll be next to impossible to take down."

Two leading critics of gated communities are Edward J. Blakely and Mary Gail Snyder, coauthors of Fortress America: Gated Communities in the United States, in which they show the astonishing growth of gated communities nationwide. Although largely concentrated in Florida, Texas, and California, gated developments are being built in almost every state. A 1997 estimate pegged their number at about 20,000, up from only 12,000 in 1985. Approximately eight million Americans live in some type of gated community, and developers' estimates say that as many as four million others are currently interested in moving into one. Perhaps the most telling mark of this housing revolution comes from Florida, where 90 percent of all new construction includes some kind of gate.

The proliferation of gated communities in the United States is a relatively new thing (save for New York's Tuxedo Park, which was founded in 1880). Gated developments did not show up until the late 1960s and did not find favor until the 1980s. Yet they have been with us much longer than that. Blakely and Snyder trace their existence as far back as feudal England, when occupying Romans walled off their settlements against attack.

Blakely and Snyder break up today's "walled settlements" into three distinct groups. The first type is known as a "lifestyle community," where the gate promises secure enjoyment of leisure activities and amenities. The second is the "elite" community. Inhabited largely by the very rich but also by the middle-class, these projects symbolize distinction and prestige. The third type of community is the "security zone," wherein gates and blockades are placed due to fear of crime and of outsiders.

In Fortress America, many developers interviewed point to consumer demand as a major factor in the explosion of gated communities. A 1990 survey of Southern California home shoppers found that 54 percent wanted a home in a gated development, and local developers responded, erecting over 100 new developments in a five-year span. But where does this apparent desire of some Americans to enclose, to privatize, and, as some say, to exclude others from their lives come from?

Professor Georgianna Wilson-Doenges of the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay is an expert on gated communities. Wilson-Doenges says that there are two major driving forces behind Americans' migration to gated communities. The first, she says, is "fear of crime . . . more so, the perception of crime. People in America today perceive an unknown, unsafe element, and a gated community makes them feel safer."

Secondly, she says, residents of gated communities are on a search for a sense of neighborhood. "Many people feel they have lost that part of life, that sense of neighborhood. And so they flock to gated communities in hopes that living in a small, tightly-knit enclave of people will bring that feeling back."

An early November visit to Wexford Village reveals a tasteful but fairly standard development of about 10 low-rise buildings arranged in individually named cul-de-sacs off of the main road, Duncannon Avenue. Naturalistic landscaping surrounds each building, and parking areas are ample yet mostly unobtrusive. Frequent speed bumps greatly limit the speed of traffic through the development, which at times on that mid-morning visit, was pin-drop quiet.

Duncannon Avenue winds its way through the property, culminating at the development's clubhouse, a cozy, immaculate building with comfortable chairs and divans surrounding a crackling fireplace. A pair of residents -- both men, each about sixty who did not want to be named -- sat together over the morning paper at one of the room's many small hardwood roundtables.

Asked what their impressions of community feeling in Wexford were, one man says, "It's the same here as it is outside, no better, no worse," but he stops short of calling Wexford a neighborhood.

"I've made a few friends here, but really, I see it as more just a place to live, than a separate place from the rest of the city," he adds.

Other residents spoken to as they exit their cars say much the same, and more than a few expressed an annoyed sort of surprise over all the attention their gate -- or as one man puts it, their "little fence -- has received.

Their sentiments are certainly understandable. Wexford's gate is the only one of its kind in Worcester, hardly constituting any sort of social epidemic. But preventing the possibility of such an epidemic is exactly the aim of the CHW, which has taken further action since their October protest. Reveille and Wilson have filed a petition to the city's Department of Public Works, in hopes of obtaining changes to zoning laws that would ban gates like Wexford Village's throughout Worcester.

Such an action begs the question: What great danger lies behind the gates? Many developers say none at all, and instead say gating is communally beneficial -- the idea being that increased security leads to a reduction in fear, which in turn leads to increased neighborly contact. They say that gates not only add prestige to communities, but that they also increase property values. Residents of gated communities almost uniformly -- and justifiably -- speak of their right to privacy, security, and the very freedom of choosing where and how they want to live.

"I enjoy having this [gate]. . . . When I was growing up, I didn't have this sort of thing and I appreciate it now," says Connie Roche, a Wexford Village resident.

But those on the opposite side claim that for one, studies show gates do little to inhibit crime. A 1988-'89 police department study, pointed to by authors Blakely and Snyder, comparing crime rates in gated and non-gated Ft. Lauderdale neighborhoods, showed no significant change in violent or property-crime rates. Though auto-theft and burglary rates showed significant drops immediately after gates where erected, the study concluded those benefits were short-lived. A second study by the Ft. Lauderdale police in 1990 contrasted the crime rates in several gated areas with the city as a whole and found that the gates had no significant effect. Moreover, a simultaneous survey of police officers themselves found that many officers disliked the gates, citing difficulties in patrolling areas and responding to calls. This potentially negative factor of gating reared its head at Wexford Village, Reveille and Wilson say that one resident told them an ambulance sat stuck at the gate one night, beeping its horn repeatedly until let inside.

More portentous is the opposition's attack on the very nature of life within gated communities. Developers and parent companies often provide various social services to their residents -- things like street cleaning, trash collection, even fire and police services. Opponents to gated communities say that increased reliance on internal services such as these could lead to reduced voter interest in what's going on outside the walls, in the city or town at large.

Blakely and Snyder attack the notion that gated communities offer a tight-knit, neighborly living environment. Their study of residents in Southern California found that while 65 percent found their developments "friendly," only 8 percent said they were "tight-knit," and 28 percent said their communities were "distant or private." And when asked to compare the level of community feeling in their development to that outside the gates, the plurality said it was "about the same" as inside.

Blakely and Snyder seek to disprove developer's claims that gates increase property value. The authors' 1991-'95 study of gated and non-gated housing in Orange County, California, found no consistent pattern of sales data. In some cases, gated communities held an edge, while in others they were at a price disadvantage.

What critics of gated communities fear the most is the potential damage they feel gating could have on the American way of life. They point to extreme examples like the Chicago suburb of Rosemont, a city of 4000 whose largest residential area is completely blocked off from the rest of the city. Town police stand guard at the entrances and can check ID, take down license plate numbers, and deny entry to visitors.

Or they offer up Hidden Hills, California, an exclusive development that, among a growing number of others, has taken the extreme step of incorporating itself as a city, with residents contributing to a localized tax pool to pay for public services, and to tenant-associations for local government. They also point to Hidden Valley, California, which has installed a $50,000 electronic anti-terrorist "bullard" to impale the tires of unauthorized visitors. But most of all, they say, a future where gated communities are commonplace can only be a bleak one, where America's inherent lines of separation become physical objects.

If indeed Americans are, as Wilson-Doenges says, flocking to gated communities out of a growing sense of fear, then comments in Fortress America from noted developer Peter Calthorpe recall the exploits of the ancient Greek general Pyrrhus, whose costly victories in battle gave rise to the phrase, "Pyrrhic victory" -- a battle in which one's losses far exceed one's gain. "(Gated communities) represent a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more isolated people become, and the less they share with others unlike themselves, the more they do have to fear."

Residents of Wexford Village surveyed uniformly disagreed with Calthorpe's notion. "This is where I live. It's quiet and it's private. That's all," says one man in his mid-40s. "We're not trying to isolate ourselves . . . is there something wrong with personal privacy?"

Reveille and Wilson don't say the residents of Wexford Village are trying to isolate themselves, but they do believe that the gate around their property sets a dangerous precedent in Worcester. And they will continue their fight, as in addition to their petition to the DPW, they plan to turn the CHW website (www.nindy.com/chw) into a clearinghouse of information on gated communities.

"I think we [the CHW] have done a pretty good job so far," says Reveille, who doesn't plan on picketing Wexford Village again. "Our real concern comes from other potential sites for gated communities. . . . I have this frightening image in my head of what it could be like here.

"Clearly there is no paranoid cycle of behavior in Worcester right now, but it's a scary concept.

"It would be so hard to go back."