Where I'm from, the closest thing to a gated community that you might find is the local cemetery. Sprawling McMansions, tucked away behind gatehouses, manned by folks who can't afford to live in the McMansions they "guard" are all but nonexistent."How sad!" you may be thinking. "Why, if we didn't have developers down here to rape and pillage every square inch of undeveloped earth, plunk down gargantuan box after lookalike gargantuan box, and then erect a big giant fence around the whole thing, where would we live? And how would people know that we're better than them, or that we make more money?"
And if you're the kind of person who wants your neighbor's nose up your ass, who craves guidance on issues like when it's okay to have your garage door open, or who believes that anyone whose visitors would park on the street deserves a citation, then a gated community might be just the thing for you.
I can think of a few instances where I might find a gated community appealing. Iraq's Green Zone comes to mind. I might want a big gate and fence there. And it's a safe bet the neighbors would be less concerned about your garage door than about pesky issues like whether you've got explosives strapped to your chest.
But absent insurgents or zombies or something, I'm hard-pressed to figure out why you'd want to live in a gated community. Maybe you think polarizing our society is kind of neat. Perhaps you never really saw much of a problem with that whole "separate but equal" thing. Or maybe you just sort of always wanted to be an elitist pig. In which case, you know, it's good to have goals.
P.S. Darren informs me that Paris Hilton just sold her house, so that she could buy a new one in a gated community. Which should tell you a little something about the kind of people who live in gated communities. How Darren knows this is an issue for a whole separate blog post, however.
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