This book is the result of ten years of academic research, professional consultancy experience, and community engagement connected to the fragmented urban growth process since the 1990s in Puebla's metropolitan area in Mexico. I conceived this book as an opportunity to address the urban gating phenomenon beyond the usual social and spatial segregation concerns by focusing on policy implications, everyday practices, local government challenges, and financial drivers. The book offers a comprehensive analysis of urban fragmentation and the privatisation of public life and planning practice in the Latin American context. It presents a specific case study of an extreme case of gatedness in Mexico, which shows the interconnections between policies, social practices, and meanings in the emergence and proliferation of these fortified spaces.

The book may interest urban planning students, public officials, policy makers, and scholars interested in Latin American land, housing, and spatial planning policy challenges and the rise of gated urban environments. Readers from around the globe will find synergies and relevant messages for their own increasingly divided cities. The book also offers a practice-based analysis framework based on the concept of gatedness, whose multi-scalar and multi-dimensional approach might serve future planners and researchers for a better understanding of urban fragmentation with tools that will enable them to provide creative solutions in complex, divided contexts. The framework was created based on one case study, but it can be used as a pathway for researchers and practitioners worldwide.