Gated communities are residential areas, ranging in size from individual streets and neighborhoods to entire cities, enclosed by walls and gates that are intended to prevent unauthorized entry by nonresidents. In many gated communities further protection against the outside world is provided by private security guards and electronic security systems. Most such communities operate as Common Interest Developments in which residents collectively own the common spaces or shared amenities, and a private homeowners association oversees community affairs. The population of these fortified enclaves tends to be overwhelmingly middle-or upper-class, white, and middle-aged or older. The primary reason they settle in such places, according to surveys, is to escape the crime, traffic, and noise of the cities and ungated suburbs. To many observers, the rising number of gated communities constitutes, in the words of Clinton Administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich, "the succession of the successful" from the...