Is the gated community really safe? An empirical analysis based on communities with varying degrees of closure

ABSTRACT Gated communities are considered a way of living that provides privacy and security. Existing research has mostly focused on subjective emotional judgments such as fear of crime, while it is unclear whether communities with different degrees of closure have avoided insecure incidents. Taking six communities and 649 questionnaires in Changsha, China as study cases, we analyze the relationship between community closure and community security. The results show that not gated communities but open communities are the safest, while semi-gated communities are the least safe. It is confirmed that community security is regardless of being gated. One possible explanation for this is the joint effect of ‘dual security scenarios’. This means that the living communities’ security is not only rooted in the construction of a safe physical space, but also depended on a humanistic atmosphere with informal relations and residents’ safety awareness, providing natural surveillance possibilities.