Since the late 1990s, scholars have shown a growing interest in new patterns of exclusion and fortification in cities (Marcuse, 1997). Seminal literature like Blakely and Snyder's Fortress America (1997) provided the language and key typologies and identified the main drivers of gated communities in the US. Davis's City of Quartz (1990) and McKenzie's Privatopia (1994) warned about the risks and challenges of the privatisation of urban and residential life, and Caldeira's City of Walls (2000) and Low's Behind the Gates (2003) alerted readers to fortification as a response to the fear of crime. This chapter explores discussions since the 1990s and how gated communities have been central to the broader normalisation of urban fragmentation as experienced in cities today.

The normalisation of gated communities

Since the 1990s, scholarly work about the gating phenomenon has flourished just as gated residential spaces have become a common housing choice. The fascination with these fortified enclaves has become part of popular culture. Since the 1990s, gated communities have become the setting for hundreds of movies and television series portraying segregation, social injustice, fear, and exclusion. In some cases, it is not only a setting but plays a major role in the plot. The Mexican-Spanish film La Zona (2007) by director Rodrigo Plá describes how residents of a gated community decide to take justice into their own hands after a couple of young boys break into the enclave. The British TV series Safe (2018) addresses the perception of security, demonstrating that living in an exclusive, highly securitised area does not guarantee immunity from crime.