What Gate? Gate what?

Since economic liberalization period, Chinese housing typologies have experienced a dramatical change. From the traditional Siheyuan building type to the current gated communities, which prototype has become the most widespread residential housing type in modern China Cities. At the same time, many negative feedbacks about the city life have been appearing, such as traffic congestion, the loss of street vigor and the one side thousand cities phenomenon, etc, of which gated communities prototype is blamed as one of the causes. It seems that the traditional living habits had been overlooked for purpose of solving the population growth. While through the review of Chinese history changes, we could have a comprehensive understanding of the physical evolution and the social change behind it. The gated communities in contemporary China have their particular socio-political evolution process, which could not be explained directly by Western housing theory. And for the consequence, the unique tradition and the living habit, as well as the characteristic momentums during the developing process have a profound influence on the formation of Chinese gated communities, in both conceptual and materialistic way.