Do Fence Me In

The Age

Saturday May 5, 2007

Jane Cadzow

Gated communities are a global phenomenon, and behind their walls the "secession of the successful" continues apace. Jane Cadzow follows the emerald-green grass to privatopia.

THE ROAD INTO HOPE ISLAND RESORT on the Gold Coast is blocked by a set of imposing steel gates. "Abandon hope all ye who enter here," I mutter to myself as I stop the car next to an electronic device at the kerbside and punch a set of digits into the keypad. A message flashes onto the screen: "The Infinity is now dialling the number of the person you rang."

The Infinity? Next thing, a disembodied voice is telling me where to go to find the resort's marketing manager, David Small. The directions are a bit confusing. I get lost and end up in an office marked Hope Island Security, where the polite young receptionist offers to help. "What is your number?" she asks.

I look at her uncertainly. My number?

"Oh, sorry," she says with a smile. "I mean, what is your name?"

HOPE ISLAND RESORT IS ONE OF THE LARGEST OF Australia's so-called "gated communities" - residential developments surrounded by fences, patrolled by guards and monitored by hidden cameras. It occupies 350 hectares in the Coomera River delta, 50 minutes' drive south of Brisbane, and is home to about 3000 people. "We love it here," says Nichole Jennings, 41, an attractive blonde with two fluffy white dogs at her feet. "It's fabulous," agrees her partner, Gary Chuck, 59, who made his fortune in the used-car warranty business and has the deepest suntan I've ever seen.

The couple live with Jennings' three children and the Maltese terriers, Dudley and Princess, in a 1700-square-metre pile on the waterfront. Inside, the house is an exuberant pastiche of decorating influences. Think Mediterranean palazzo meets Hapsburg hunting lodge. "It's gorgeous," says Chuck, beaming with pride as he leads the way beyond the soaring columns and sweeping staircase to a manicured garden fringed with palm trees. Moored at a pontoon below the lawn is his 30-metre motor yacht, Dreamer. Parked out front in the circular driveway - perhaps there isn't room in the 12-car garage - is his white stretch limousine, numberplate CHUCK1.

For Jennings, living at Hope Island means peace of mind. "I'm never concerned about being broken into or robbed," she says, pointing out that barring strangers from the resort not only reduces the risk of burglary but minimises traffic. There are so few vehicles on the roads that she has no qualms about permitting her children to walk or cycle to the parks within the boundaries. "I mean, you don't have to worry about a thing."

She is puzzled by criticism of privately run residential enclaves - privatopias, as they are sometimes dubbed. "If you've got the opportunity to live in a gated community, why wouldn't you do it?" she asks. "You're with like-minded people. You're secure. Your kids are secure. And it's just so pleasant."

From Chuck's point of view, the less contact he has with the outside world, the better. For a man who started his career as a cleaner at Woolworths and retains a disarmingly knockabout manner, he seems to have developed a strong aversion to the common herd. "Go to Labrador," he says, referring to a perfectly normal nearby suburb, "and see some of the gorillas hanging around. You'd want to be in a gated community too."

He confesses to thinking twice before venturing past the checkpoint these days. "There have been times I've gone out the gates and thought, 'It feels strange to be out here. With all the crazies roaring around.' "

Gated communities are a global phenomenon. In the US, where at least 20 million citizens live in them already, demand for fortress-style accommodation is so strong that it is changing the pattern of urban development. In states such as California, Nevada and Florida, most new housing is built behind walls. The concept has been embraced in China, South Africa, South America, parts of Europe and the Middle East. In this country, we have been slower off the mark, but Matthew Burke, a research fellow at Queensland's Griffith University, estimates that the population in secure estates is 100,000 and rising. The concentration is highest in south-eastern Queensland, where the first of our gated communities, Sanc-tuary Cove, was established 20 years ago. In the past decade, they have sprung up in regional NSW, Sydney and Melbourne.

Robert Reich, US labour secretary in the Clinton administration, coined the phrase "the secession of the successful" to describe the increasing tendency for the well-heeled to opt out of the civic life of the broader community. Not all gated communities are the preserve of the wealthy, though. At one end of the Australian scale are five-star retreats constructed around golf courses and man-made lakes, with marinas, tennis courts and swimming pools. At the other end are unprepossessing clusters of inner-city townhouses. A few of the fancier developments have gatehouses manned by uniformed staff, others have automatic gates operated by swipe cards or key codes, and some rely merely on signs saying "Residents only". Their common goal is to discourage unwanted visitors.

"Gated communities stick two fingers up at the public," says Rowland Atkinson, who co-authored a British report on their proliferation and is now director of the University of Tasmania's housing and community research unit. "One planner we spoke to called them sod-off architecture."

HOPE ISLAND HAS A SLIGHT AIR OF UNREALITY about it. The putting greens are not just green but emerald, the waterlilies in the lagoons an impossibly vivid shade of pink. Even the birds seem to chirrup more sweetly than those beyond the boundary fence. The resort is as preternaturally neat as a film set: not a feather or leaf out of place. People wave and greet one another by name.

David Small, whom I eventually track down, sees nothing elitist or antisocial about it. "They're not trying to shut themselves away," the marketing manager says of the residents. "They're just trying to give themselves a little bit of security." And who can blame them? "Every day you see the headlines. People being bashed in their houses, thugs on the streets."

Here, the chief hazard is being run down by a golf cart. The electric buggies aren't confined to the course - everyone uses them to buzz back and forth to the shops, clubhouse, restaurants and tavern. "You can have a nice party and drive home and drink-driving is not an issue," says Geoff Smithwick, head of the resort's wine

appreciation society. His wife, Judy, says that when they lived in Melbourne, she worried that Geoff would have a car accident on the way home from the golf club. Now she has less cause for anxiety. "At worst, he could end up in the lake," she says cheerfully.

The gregarious Smithwicks, both retired, keep themselves busy with bridge, water aerobics, pil-ates and tai chi. "We've made more friends here in three years than we made in 10 years down in Melbourne," says Geoff, who believes the gates create a feeling of camaraderie.

University of NSW researcher Dana Quintal is inclined to agree. In a recent study of life in Syd-ney gated communities, Quintal discovered an unusual degree of neighbourliness. "I thought that was an incredibly positive thing," she says. But if perimeter barriers give residents a sense of being "insiders", and part of a tangible community, they can also foster the perception that people beyond the walls are "outsiders", says Griffith University's Matthew Burke. "And it is only one small mental step from being an outsider to being a threat."

Some overseas research indicates that living behind gates fosters a kind of paranoia - the presence of elaborate security systems is a constant reminder of the perils awaiting the unwary. Even the Smithwicks, relaxed about most things, are glad of the emergency button that's fitted in every house and can bring a security guard to the door within three minutes. They haven't needed to use it yet, though Judy confesses they once called for help accidentally: "Geoffrey walked in having had a little bit too much to drink and pressed the alarm instead of the light switch."

Public relations consultant Paul Wilson moved to the Gold Coast's Sovereign Islands because he enjoys boating. He certainly wasn't fleeing crime. But now that he's here, he finds comfort in the fact that the gate is shut from 10pm to 5am. "The security guard's car is going past every 10 or 15 minutes," he says, "and you know at night that the gate has been closed - it's just a good feeling."

For ex-Brisbane couple Ashley and Siety Moore, life at Hope Island is one long holiday. "To me, it's a bit like being on a cruise ship," says Ashley. Over time, though, the Moores have become the sort of passengers who rarely go ashore. Siety says with a laugh that she realised a while ago they were leaving the resort less and less. "And every time we come back inside the gates, Ashley goes, 'Oh, thank goodness!' "

GATED COMMUNITIES ARE NO PLACE FOR the rebellious. Hope Island home owners are bound by rules governing everything from exterior paint colour (pastel or muted earth tones) to roof materials (clay or concrete tiles) and the layout of front yards (25 per cent of total area to be planted with shrubs or trees). Children's play equipment must not be visible from the road. Garden beds must be mulched to a depth of 75 millimetres. Cocos palms are not permitted. And so on.

Then there are the architectural guidelines that give each precinct a distinctive character. In the area known as Rosebank, where the designated look is Tuscan, the streets are lined with villas you might almost imagine had been airlifted from the hills around Florence. In Riverleigh Gardens, body-corporate by-laws stipulate that builders take their cue from Andrea Palladio, the Italian Renaissance architect. "The designs ... shall reflect the antiquity of temple-front porches on a stripped, cubist design of crisp geometric clarity," says the building code. Campaniles, cupolas and colonnades are strongly encouraged.

At least the occupants of these grand abodes aren't restricted in their choice of pets: at the ultra-modern residential complex at nearby Ephraim Island, dogs of more than 10 kilograms are forbidden. Sales manager Paul Sanders admits the weight limit has caused controversy: some residents argue that small dogs make more noise than big ones. Should you be allowed to move in if you promise to put your 11-kilogram hound on a diet? What if your pooch refuses to step on the scales? "It's a grey area," says Sanders, who recently bought a penthouse apartment on the island. "When my wife said, 'I wouldn't mind having a dog', I said, 'Forget it! Get a cat.'? "

For all the surface bonhomie, disagreements are quite common and can get heated. Sanders lived for a while at Noosa Springs on the Sunshine Coast, where, as he tells it, a row erupted over the round-the-clock manning of the gatehouse. One faction, concerned by rising body-corporate fees, proposed cutting costs by reducing the guards' hours and introducing a supplementary key code entry system. The other group - which won - insisted that the gatehouse remain occupied 24 hours a day. "The fighting," Sanders says, rolling his eyes. "It was an absolute debacle." (Noosa Springs general manager Philip Starkey concedes there was "a bit of to-ing and fro-ing" over the issue but denies it was a major dispute.)

In Melbourne, the sister communities of Sandhurst Club and Sanctuary Lakes have neither gatehouses nor front gates. "We don't subscribe to all that high-tech security stuff where it's almost like a prison," says Ron Smith, a spokesman for developer LinksLiving. "We don't think it's appropriate for Australia." Instead, the compounds are patrolled by security staff and kept under surveillance by discreetly positioned swivelling cameras. "Just about anywhere on the estate we can track people," says Smith, explaining that all cars are filmed as they arrive. "We know the time they come in and the time they leave. We know the numberplate."

Everyone in gated communities is under observation - "There are eyes everywhere," says Paul Sanders - but residents I meet seem blithely unconcerned by the loss of privacy. In his elegant apartment overlooking the water at Ephraim Island, retired newspaper executive Neil Cooper marvels at the power of the 38 cameras trained on the buildings, pools and open spaces. "They can almost tell you the colour of someone's eyes on the beach down there," he says. "Incredible."

Sanders says I'd be surprised by some of the stuff the cameras catch. People taking their dogs for walks and flouting the rule to pick up after them, for instance. ("They get a letter straight away. And so they should. That is not tolerated.") Then there's the really interesting footage.

Such as? "I can only say one thing," he murmurs. "Wherever there's a spa, there's trouble."

MACQUARIE LINKS ESTATE IS AN IMMACULATELY landscaped island of affluence in the low-income sprawl of south-western Sydney. Two years ago, when the nearby suburb of Macquarie Fields erupted in riots, the violence was attributed to frustration born of poverty and unemployment. But at Macquarie Links, well, the sign outside the estate says it all: "Life doesn't get any better than this!"

Mick Walls, who greets me at the entrance, is a former chairman of the home-owners' association and the current grounds manager. An amiable bloke who has his own plumbing business, he explains that like most gated communities, Macquarie Links is a strata title development - individuals hold title to the land on which their houses stand and share ownership of common areas. Each of the 350 householders contributes about $2500 a year towards the employment of security guards and the upkeep of private roads, the golf course, heated swimming pool, tennis courts and gardens.

"That lawn! It's like a billiard table," I hear myself say as we drive slowly through the estate. "That hedging! It's amazing."

Walls is pleased. "Yeah, all the hedging," he says. "We like to make it look, you know, nice."

Around the corner, we make a nasty discovery. A car has been left on a grassy verge. "Parking up on nature strips," he says grimly. "They're not supposed to. There are sprinkler heads in there."

In her book Behind the Gates: Life, Security and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America, anthropologist Setha Low talks about "the search for niceness". So determined are some US residents' groups to create perfect communities, she says, they make rules about everything from the type of furniture that can be seen through picture windows to the colour of lights that may be used on Christmas trees (white). They also regulate against unseemly behaviour. In one estate, a woman caught kissing her boyfriend in her driveway was threatened with expulsion.

This sort of thing was satirised in a 1999 episode of The X Files television series, in which agents Mulder and Scully go undercover in the fictitious gated community of Arcadia Falls, where people have been disappearing. It turns out the residents have been murdered by the president of the home-owners' association for such minor infringements as having the wrong coloured letterbox or hanging a wooden whirligig in view of the road. (When Mulder and Scully ask for permission to put up a basketball hoop, they are told basketball hoops lead to lawn ornaments and lawn ornaments lead to drug dealers selling heroin on street corners.)

Real-life residents' group leaders like Mick Walls attribute their preoccupation with orderliness and security to the need to maintain property values. Yet real estate agents say houses in gated estates fetch prices no higher than equivalent dwellings in ungated neighbourhoods. They may even be slightly cheaper, because some prospective purchasers are put off by the prospect of ongoing body-corporate fees. At the same time, the effectiveness of gated communities' crime-prevention measures is open to doubt. "The international evidence is that they're no more secure than ordinary residential developments," says Brendan Gleeson, professor of urban policy at Griffith University.

The irony is that the spread of fenced estates has coincided with a sharp fall in the crime rate outside the gates. According to Australian Institute of Criminology director Toni Makkai, the incidence of robbery and break-and-enters has declined by about 40 per cent across the nation in the past five years, while car theft has dropped 35 per cent in a decade. Homicide is down, too.

We have never been safer - so why the alarms and spy equipment? Brendan Gleeson suspects our society is beset by generalised anxiety. Con-stantly changing technology, overturned workplace laws, the much-hyped threat of terrorism, the spectre of global warming ... "There is a deepening sense of fatigue in the Australian community and this is one way of dealing with it," he says. "People are exhausted. They just want to shut out the world."

JIM SUFFREDINI HAD LIVED IN WESTERN Sydney for a couple of decades without a single break-in before he bought a place at Macquarie Links. Three days after he moved in with his wife and children, they were robbed. The Sun-Herald reported at the time that the thieves had simply loaded up the family's Ford Fairmont and driven away, using the stolen remote control to open the gate. Suffredini told the paper he was disappointed that in the aftermath no one from the residents' association had inquired after their welfare: "The only message was a letter to say our letterbox didn't fit the style of the estate."

That was almost seven years ago, and he has had no trouble since. "We're happy here now," Suffredini says when I call. "It's pretty serene." But Macquarie Links was in the news again when police raided a house in the estate last December, towing away a Porsche and arresting one person, who was charged with supplying prohibited drugs and benefiting from the proceeds of crime. Luke Fuda, a photographer with The Camp-belltown-Macarthur Advertiser, remembers the day of the raid well. After taking a picture of the house in question, he was stopped at the gate by a security guard demanding he hand over his camera and driver's licence. "When I said no, he reached in and took my keys out of the ignition," Fuda says. "He was quite arrogant and rude. He was yelling at me."

Of course, these were isolated incidents. Most of the time, nothing much happens at Macquarie Links and that's just the way 82-year-old Greg Percival likes it. To the former mayor of Camp-belltown, who moved in three years ago, the unhurried pace and normally quiet streets are a reminder of the way life used to be. Take the welcome he got the day he arrived: "A car pulls up and a lady gets out with a wicker basket, with hot scones, strawberry jam and a pot of coffee. I can remember as a little kid that sort of thing happening. But I hadn't seen it for 50 or 60 years."

David Small agrees that gated estates go some way to recapturing an ideal past, when things were less pressured and lives seemed to be led on a smaller scale: "It's winding back the clock a bit," he says.

But it seems to Gleeson that places like Hope Island Resort and Macquarie Links bear little resemblance to Australian suburbia of old. Re-member what it was like? Modest bungalows, overgrown yards, dilapidated sheds, rusty swing sets. "Our suburbs were scruffy," Gleeson says. "They were actually very unruly places."

AFTER LEAVING THE LAST OF THE ENCLOSED communities I visit, I pause and watch in the rear-vision mirror as the gate swings slowly shut behind me. I have seen some remarkable houses in the past couple of weeks. The gardens were splendid. The people couldn't have been more amiable. But as I drive away, I wind down the car window and breathe a small sigh of relief. I like it out here in gorilla country.