Gated Communities and their Neighborhoods: Understanding Peri Urbanization in Tier - II Cities of India
Gated Communities (GCs) are wholly residential or mixed-use developments in which the perimeter is walled-off, entry/exit is restricted, infrastructure and services inside are mostly privately provided, and the developments are privately governed by residents’ associations, who impose their own rules regarding usage of common areas, code of conduct, and so on. GCs have now become the predominant housing typology in peri-urban areas of tier-II cities in India, as well as the most preferred redevelopment projects in inner-city neighborhoods of tier-I cities. My own doctoral research deals with a study of GCs in Ahmedabad and Baroda, examining them through the lenses of infrastructure and services, relationship with urban authorities, their marketing and advertising rhetoric, and their architectural decisions which shape their particular aesthetic language.This study will focus on the relationship between GCs located in peri-urban areas and their surrounding neighborhoods, preferably aiming to study scenarios in two tier-II cities of India, depending on student location. The central idea is to understand how GCs shape their neighborhoods, beginning with their immediate surroundings, then the urban block, and then the larger neighborhood which contains several clusters of GCs. Various scales of office and retail development, public amenities like parks and townhouses, street vendors and informal commercial units, roads, urban infrastructure & services, and leisure & recreational establishments like restaurants, cafeterias, sports turfs, multiplexes, and gyms; these are all physical, mappable developments that have come up around GCs, as an outcome of their development, thereby forming entire neighborhoods with GCs as original developments.
