IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envira/v38y2006i1p131-148.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Retreat of the Upper and Middle Classes to Gated Communities in the Poststructural Adjustment Era: The Case of Trinidad

Author

Listed:
  • Michelle Mycoo

    (Graduate Programme in Planning and Development, Department of Surveying and Land Information, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad)

Abstract

The emergence of gated communities of the upper-income and middle-income classes can be directly traced to the failure of governments to close the growing divide between rich and poor and to solve the accompanying wave of crime and fear of violence. It is also a result of an abandonment of faith in governments' capacities to deliver and maintain infrastructure and civic services. State failure has influenced people's decisions to encircle their living space, defend it, and to service their needs autonomously like citizens of the ancient walled cities. The trend toward social exclusion and spatial segregation is characteristic of these modern ministates, which poses planning, policy, and administrative questions for decisionmakers. In this paper I first set out to understand the emergence of gated communities as a global phenomenon, but particularly in the Latin American and Caribbean context. Secondly, I seek to examine the retreat of the upper and middle classes to gated communities in the poststructural adjustment years, using Trinidad as a case study. Finally, I put forward conclusions and policy prescriptions of relevance to cities in addressing the emerging issues.

Suggested Citation

  • Michelle Mycoo, 2006. "The Retreat of the Upper and Middle Classes to Gated Communities in the Poststructural Adjustment Era: The Case of Trinidad," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 38(1), pages 131-148, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:38:y:2006:i:1:p:131-148
    DOI: 10.1068/a37323
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a37323
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1068/a37323?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Helsley, Robert W. & Strange, William C., 1999. "Gated Communities and the Economic Geography of Crime," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 80-105, July.
    2. Fred E. Foldvary, 1994. "Public Goods And Private Communities," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 167.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Adrienne La Grange, 2014. "Hong Kong's Gating Machine," Housing Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(2), pages 251-269, March.
    2. Ayona Datta, 2014. "Gendered Nature and Urban Culture: The Dialectics of Gated Developments in Izmir, Turkey," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(4), pages 1363-1383, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Marceau, Nicolas & Mongrain, Steeve, 2011. "Competition in law enforcement and capital allocation," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 136-147, January.
    2. Moroni, Stefano & Antoniucci, Valentina & Bisello, Adriano, 2016. "Energy sprawl, land taking and distributed generation: towards a multi-layered density," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 266-273.
    3. Baumann, Florian & Friehe, Tim, 2013. "Private protection against crime when property value is private information," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 73-79.
    4. Sara Santos Cruz & Paulo Pinho, 2009. "Closed Condominiums as Urban Fragments of the Contemporary City," European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(11), pages 1685-1710, November.
    5. Louis Hotte & Tanguy Van Ypersele, 2008. "Individual protection against property crime: decomposing the effects of protection observability," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 41(2), pages 537-563, May.
    6. Fred E. Foldvary, 2011. "Contract, Voice and Rent: Voluntary Urban Planning," Chapters, in: David Emanuel Andersson & Åke E. Andersson & Charlotta Mellander (ed.), Handbook of Creative Cities, chapter 25, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. Francesco Minora, 2013. "Collective institutions towards habitability: roles, strategies and forms of governance," Euricse Working Papers 1352, Euricse (European Research Institute on Cooperative and Social Enterprises).
    8. Ben O’Neill, 2011. "The Threat of Virtue: Why Independence and Integrity Threaten the State," Journal of Private Enterprise, The Association of Private Enterprise Education, vol. 27(Fall 2011), pages 75-98.
    9. Baumann, Florian & Friehe, Tim, 2015. "Status concerns as a motive for crime?," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 46-55.
    10. Peter Boettke & Christopher Coyne & Peter Leeson, 2011. "Quasimarket failure," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 149(1), pages 209-224, October.
    11. Peter Gordon & Wendell Cox, 2014. "Modern cities: their role and their private planning roots," Chapters, in: David Emanuel Andersson & Stefano Moroni (ed.), Cities and Private Planning, chapter 8, pages 155-173, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    12. Levent Taş & Esra Burcu Sağlam, 2020. "New Trends and Socio-Spatial Relations in Gated Communities," Journal of Economy Culture and Society, Istanbul University, Faculty of Economics, vol. 62(0), pages 1-21, December.
    13. Zimmerman, Paul R., 2014. "The deterrence of crime through private security efforts: Theory and evidence," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 66-75.
    14. Yoonseuk Woo & Chris Webster, 2014. "Co-evolution of gated communities and local public goods," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 51(12), pages 2539-2554, September.
    15. Aron Gooblar, 2002. "Outside the Walls: Urban Gated Communities and their Regulation within the British Planning System," European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(3), pages 321-334, April.
    16. Alessi Louis De, 1998. "Reflections on Coase, Cost, and Efficiency," Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 1-22, March.
    17. Cheung, Ron, 2008. "The interaction between public and private governments: An empirical analysis," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 885-901, May.
    18. F. Frederic Deng, 2002. "Ground Lease-Based Land Use System versus Common Interest Development," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 78(2), pages 190-206.
    19. Ross Hickey & Steeve Mongrain & Joanne Roberts & Tanguy van Ypersele, 2021. "Private protection and public policing," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 23(1), pages 5-28, February.
    20. Kangoh Lee & Santiago M. Pinto, 2009. "Crime In A Multi‐Jurisdictional Model With Private And Public Prevention," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(5), pages 977-996, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:38:y:2006:i:1:p:131-148. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.