Beyond Gated Communities

Research on gated communities is moving away from the hard concept of a gated community to the more fluid one of urban gating. The latter allows communities to be viewed through a new lens of soft boundaries, modern communication and networks of influence.

The book written by an international team of experts builds on the research of Bagaeen and Uduku’s previous edited publication, Gated Communities (Routledge 2010) and relates recent events to trends in urban research, showing how the discussion has moved from privatised to newly collectivised spaces, which have been the focal point for events such as the Occupy London movement and the Arab Spring.

Communities are now more mobilised and connected than ever, and Beyond Gated Communities shows how neighbourhoods can become part of a global network beyond their own gates. With chapters on Australia, Canada, Europe, South America, Asia and the Middle East, this is a truly international resource for scholars and students of urban studies interested in this dynamic, growing area of research.

Samer Bagaeen is Associate Professor of Town Planning at the University of Brighton Planning School in the United Kingdom and Visiting Professor of Planning at the Institute of Urban Economy in Lima, Peru. He is a graduate of University College London and holds an MBA from the Strathclyde Business School in Scotland. He was invited in 2012 into eminent Fellowship of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and in 2013 was invited to join the Academy of Urbanism as an Academician. He co-edited Gated Communities: Social Sustainability in Contemporary and Historical Gated Developments (Routledge, 2010 & 2012) and contributed to Dimensions of the Sustainable City (Springer, 2010). He has a research interest in the development of former military land, real estate development and tourism in the Middle East and his publications in this field include ‘Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and Qatar: Middle Eastern complexity and contradiction’ in G. Squires and E. Heurkens (eds.) (2015) International Approaches to Real Estate Development (Routledge), and ‘The soft power of branding in a post conflict situation: Gulf tourism in Bahrain’ in M. Stephenson and A. al-Hamarneh (eds.) (2015)International Tourism and the Gulf Cooperation Council States (Routledge).

Ola Uduku is Reader in Architecture at Edinburgh University, where she is Programme Director of the taught M.Sc. in Urban Strategies and Development, and teaches an interdisciplinary elective on African Cities. She has research interests in social infrastructure provision in urban areas, specifically for minority groups, and ‘urban gating’. Modern Movement Architecture in West and sub-Saharan Africa, and the history of school design in sub-Saharan Africa are also themes of inquiry. She is also involved in environmental design teaching and active in environmental analysis research, specifically investigating the use of digital tools including computer modelling and ‘apps’ for environmental analysis teaching at tertiary level. She has held EU, DfID, and British Academy awards for research in these areas, and is currently working on the Alan Vaughan Richards Archive Project in Lagos, Nigeria. Aside from her collaborative editorship on this and the previous volumeGated Communities: Social Sustainability in Contemporary and Historical Gated Developments (Routledge, 2010 & 2012), she was a co-editor ofAfrica Beyond the Post-Colonial, Uduku and Zack Williams (2004) and co-author ofSocial Infrastructure in Granby-Toxteth, Uduku & Ben-Tovim, (1997).