Gated Communities: Violating the Evolutionary Pattern of Social Networks in Urban Regeneration? Paper presented to the conference on “Gated communities: Building social divisions or safer communities?” held at the University of Glasgow

The concept of social capital is almost becoming a dominant paradigm in the understanding of the social world, gaining greater recognition among researchers and other development thinkers alike. In the UK, this concept, together with its synonyms like social networks, has equally found its expression in the urban environment, especially in the quest for a better understanding of urban regeneration processes. One of the greatest challenges is perhaps from the parallel emerging phenomenon of gated communities that is fast moving from the US cities to the UK and other European cities. Using mainly evidence from the case study of community participation in the regeneration of the inner city area of Hulme in Manchester, the paper demonstrates two things: first, the reinforcement of the salutary effects associated with social capital in the context of urban regeneration, and second, that the emerging concept of gated communities poses a potential breach of the evolutionary pattern of urban regeneration networks. The paper concludes by advocating for a persistent search for an appropriate balance between the extent to which the gated community regime should be allowed to grow on one hand and the retention of the open space mixed use type of the urban setting on the other. At the rate at which the gated regime is moving, the search for such a balance should be a matter of urgency before the entire urban setting becomes a fortress village enclosed behind the gates.