Gated and Guarded Housing in Eastern Europe

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In recent years many Eastern European agglomerations have experienced a boom of gated and guarded housing complexes (often called gated communities). While in some cities the proliferation of privately governed residential spaces has just started and is currently speeding up, in other urban areas it already represents the dominant type of newly-built residential developments. The emergence of this new kind of housing type, which was little-known before1989, raises a multitude of questions for urban researchers. What are the specific driving forces of gated and guarded housing in Eastern Europe? Who is living behind the gates and why? What are the motives and strategies of developers to build such complexes? How are gated and guarded housing complexes perceived by the public? What kind of discourses about gating and its actors can be found? Why have gated and guarded housing estates become so popular in Eastern Europe in such a short time and what are they offering?
In contrast to the United States or Latin America, where gated and guarded housing has been scrutinised from many different perspectives, research on gated and guarded housing in Eastern Europe is in its infancy and has not been studied in a broad manner. Therefore, one aim of the workshop that is documented in this issue was to invite researchers who deal with gated and guarded housing in Eastern Europe and to create a platform that should help to exchange ideas, concepts and results. Scholars from six different Eastern European Countries as well as colleagues from Great Britain, Portugal and Brazil followed our invitation to Leipzig. The workshop took place at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography on 5-6 December 2008. This edition of „forum ifl“ contains ten selected contributions from this workshop that all tackle the above mentioned questions and try to shed light on this new urban phenomenon in Eastern Europe. Although the presented articles look at gated and guarded housing from different points of view and reflect different theoretical and methodical positions, they all offer options how to read gated and guarded housing in Eastern Europe.