Gates communities

[Ms DD]

Fearful rich keep poor at bay with gated homes and razor wire

 

 

Uneven economic recovery is polarising society, and Buenos Aires' well-off are seeking peace outside the city

 

Rory Carroll in Buenos Aires

Wednesday April 25, 2007

 

The scenes are idyllic. Children cycle care-free through landscaped neighbourhoods. Parents clink glasses of malbec and polo players saddle up for practice sessions. During the week, workers resume building plush houses with gardens and swimming pools, the designs a kaleidoscope of Tuscan villas, Normandy farmhouses and Spanish haciendas.

Touring these estates, which are outside Buenos Aires, it is difficult to imagine that just five years ago Argentina was on its knees, a country battered by an economic crisis that made millions jobless, shattered the middle class and turned one of South America's safest capitals into a hunting ground for muggers and kidnappers.

 

Yet today if you visit any number of neighbourhoods you find new cars parked in driveways, and architects designing home extensions. Argentina's recovery has been remarkable.

But there is a catch. These scenes take place in "barrios cerrados", gated communities surrounded by walls, razor wire and uniformed guards toting handguns, assault rifles and walkie-talkies.

 

The country has bounced back but it is different. More than 400 mostly new neighbourhoods have mushroomed on what were swamps and cornfields outside Buenos Aires, hosting some 300,000 people and covering more land than the city they left behind.

 

The posher areas are called "countries", an apt term since outsiders need ID and authorisation to cross perimeters that look and feel like borders.

 

"You can't see the poor here, that's part of the appeal," says Ramiro Figueroa, 30, a polo player and estate agent who lives in Tortugas, a one square mile oasis an hour's drive from the capital. "I love it here. Everything is secure. I leave my windows open at night. The worst that can happen is maybe a bicycle's stolen."

 

The flight into gated communities has also been a feature of post-apartheid South Africa, with the middle classes seeking refuge from crime in what critics dub the "architecture of fear".

 

The fact that this is now happening in Argentina is causing anguished debate about whether the country's society, once considered South America's most "European" and egalitarian, is also becoming polarised along the lines of South Africa and Brazil.

 

Despite the recovery, a shanty town of corrugated tin and wood fringing Buenos Aires is a reminder that 40% of people are still in poverty. Vagrants sleep in doorways next to tourist areas and ragged children beg at traffic lights. These sights are hidden to many of those in the gated communities, says Celina Murga, 34, a film director. "The children growing up in these places are very different from others, they don't know how to behave in the real world." She is making a film, A Week Alone, about youths in a gated community who are left unsupervised. It is more Lord of the Flies than Home Alone.

 

"Instead of trying to build a circle of protection around them we need to build human beings who can deal with the world as it is," says Ms Murga. "I want to show that this is a social crisis."

 

Those outside the fences joke that the children inside think golf carts are mankind's main mode of transport and have no idea what traffic lights are for.

 

Initially, the economic meltdown in December 2001 united the middle class and the poor in rage against the government and financial institutions, which were blamed for the collapse of businesses and wiping out savings.

 

That changed when armed gangs focused on people in well-heeled districts, such as Belgrano and Palermo, creating a perception that crime was out of control. The kidnap and murder of a young man, Axel Blumberg, prompted hundreds of thousands to protest.

 

As the economy began to recover from 2003, the stream of people moving to gated communities turned into a torrent. Tiled roofs and mock turrets now peep over high walls of developments lining the 10-lane motorways out of Buenos Aires.

 

"If it is a bit off the highway and they have to drive through a poor neighbourhood to reach home people do not buy them. They are afraid of kidnapping," says Peter Haller, a property consultant. An incentive to move to gated areas is the prestige, since they are seen as a symbol of success, he said. "It takes you to another social level." The original "countries" were founded 70 years ago as weekend retreats for the polo set, and the sense of exclusiveness endures.

 

Ironically, foreigners are now snapping up apartments in central Buenos Aires, believing the city to be a good investment and good place to live, says Mr Haller. About a third of city centre properties are bought by Europeans and north Americans.

 

The middle-class exodus shows no sign of slowing and lax planning laws give free rein to the development of fresh sites. Newspapers publish weekly supplements for gated community residents and businesses are following their workers and customers.

 

The surge in spending reflects a dramatic turnaround from the dark days of 2002 when Argentina plunged into an economic abyss. A devaluation of the peso and renegotiation of the country's international debt payments caused widespread hardship but did help stop the freefall. A surge in commodity prices, especially of soya, prompted an export-led recovery.

 

Argentina's president, Néstor Kirchner, with financial help from Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez, has paid off the International Monetary Fund, boosting the government's popularity and the sense that the nation has recovered its independence.

 

Yet the mood of confidence has not stopped banks, supermarkets and restaurants leaving the city in the same way that South African firms a decade ago quit Johannesburg for Sandton, a gleaming citadel north of the city.

 

Maristella Svampa, a sociologist who has written a book on gated areas, linked the rise of such communities to the psychological impact of Argentina's 1990s privatisations which peeled away the state and the sense that it should be relied on for essential services.

 

Many residents bristle at the notion that they are cut off. Fear of crime and traffic in central Buenos Aires had obliged parents to chaperone children when they left their apartments, so they were the ones inhabiting bubbles, not those in the gated areas, says Connie Burgwardt, a 40-year-old lawyer. She moved two years ago to Santa Barbara, a complex 16 miles north of the city, and her social life has never been better. Her parents and siblings live nearby, as do half her friends, and every weekend there's a barbecue or party. "For £40,000 my choice was 40 square metres in the city - or 160 here. With a garden, a swimming pool and a hammock. You don't think twice. It's like a dream ... I don't go away from here unless I'm dead."

 

Backstory

 

Argentina's default on $100bn of foreign debt in December 2001 triggered massive capital flight and economic and political chaos. Bank savings were wiped out and the middle class joined the poor in angry protests. Unemployment and crime exploded. The economy has since bounced back, profiting from high commodity prices, debt restructuring and financial aid from Venezuela. Growth has surged at 9% over the past two years. However, 40% of the people are poor, confidence is fragile and the middle class fearful of crime.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/argentina/story/0,,2064918,00.html

[Ms DD]

When I was in Somalia, I was truly tempted to gather the neighbours of where we built a new house and propose that we have gated community with clean, green surroundings and top-notch security. The problem was most of the owners were living in Europe/US/Arab countries therefore they werent living in their own homes. I think us somalis get jeolous of each other and I will be we'd have number of similar arrangement cropping up everywhere in the country. This way we would have cleaner, safer environment for our families.