Gates to combat crime have become ubiquitous throughout Latin America and the world. Their use in residential communities fits within global historical trends to seek ways to protect and award power to some, while controlling and keeping "the enemy" out. Comparing gated private and public housing communities in Puerto Rico, my work showcases how fences and gates reinforce virtual identities, stigmatizing the poor while awarding power and prestige to the rich. Through their physical qualities, and the public images they create, gates create a safe and beautiful sanctuary for the elite, while they lock the poor behind modern-day versions of cages and regulatory panoptic structures. Gates create a "punitive city," one whose physical imagery replays many "theatres of punishment" that cement social inequality. By physically and symbolically marking these communities, gates shape and sustain race, class, and gender exclusion. When gates divide and segment a city, the purpose of the city is lost; encounters between classes are limited as neighbors seldom encounter the street or each other. Gated housing for poor and for affluent have fostered formal divisions while becoming allegorical creations of a vision of "harmony" and "safety" in which streets are empty, the "home" is the locus of the social self, and people live inside secluded post-urban worlds.
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