Gated communities and their connection with the exterior in the city of Cali: a methodological proposal for its analysis

Abstract

For some decades, many academic studies and works on gated communities or gated residential areas have been published. Many of them deal with the reasons of their residents for living in there, the existing neighboring relations resulting from the coexistence into these housing ways, or the social factors that have caused their expansion and consolidation at global scale. However, this article, which is based on a research project carried out in 2013, focuses on other questions on the connection between gated residential areas and their public spaces, as well as the social consequences derived of this connection: all of them starting from the empirical case of the city of Cali (Colombia). In order to answer this question, a research methodology is also proposed. Fundamentally based on the ethnographic method, it tries to describe and explain that connection focusing on the special features of each type of gated communities, taking into consideration the existing casuistry.