The Gated City
Planning Practice and the Challenges of Urban Fragmentation in Mexico
By Emma Regina Morales
Published
May 20, 2025Page count
208 pagesISBN
978-1447375371Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Policy PressPublished
May 20, 2025Page count
208 pagesISBN
978-1447375388Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Policy PressPublished
May 20, 2025Page count
208 pagesISBN
978-1447375388Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Policy Press
The Gated City
The book tells the story of the proliferation of gated communities and the privatisation of public life and public space in Mexico over the last three decades. Drawing on research from Lomas de Angelópolis in Puebla, one of the largest gated communities in the world, Emma Regina Morales explores why such fortified spaces have proved popular with middle-class households.
Weaving together the multiple influences of housing policy, predatory financial markets, and an increased fear of crime, the book sets out how policy makers and planners can improve decision-making and provide non-gated solutions to urban anxiety.
"Like great novels, great academic books are remarkable in multiple ways. The Gated City is not just a brilliant new take on gated communities and urban segmentation. It is also an outstanding qualitative study, a poster child for the riches of the practice approach in social research, and a unique example of comprehensive policy analysis. It weaves together data and insights from macro-level institutional behavior, the policy decisions of local governments, the campaigns of advertising agencies, and the fears and aspirations of residents. This book is destined to become a classic in the fields of urban studies, planning, and policy studies." Hendrik Wagenaar, Institute for Advanced Studies Vienna
“One of the best contributions to the gated communities literature of the last 20 years. Morales offers practical guidelines to urban planners and other policy makers to avoid repeating mistakes of the past.” Evan McKenzie, University of Illinois Chicago
“A detailed and empathic vision of life in the new gated mega-metropolises emerging as the old and apparently insecure city is abandoned. This is a masterly book with an important message, that social progress may emerge, even from these newly fragmented and private spaces.” Rowland Atkinson, University of Sheffield
"This book thoroughly explores the links between the motivations people have to live in gated communities and the policies and structural conditions that enable their rise, while reproducing and deepening spatial segregation in Global South cities." Alfredo Stein, University of Manchester
Emma Regina Morales is a planner and professor at Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente, Mexico.
Introduction
Part 1: Urban Fragmentation and the Urban Gating Phenomenon
1. Planning Practice and Urban Fragmentation
2. Gatedness: A Framework to Understand the Urban Gating Phenomenon
Part 2: Policies, Practices, and Meanings in Mexican Gatedness
3. Macro-Scale Stimulus in the Mexican Urban Gating Process
4. Regional Fragmented Configurations: Puebla's Metropolitan Area
5. Enabling the Gated City: The Lomas de Angelópolis Case
6. Conclusion
Appendix: Policy Toolbox for the Open City for Local Governments
