Gated Communities

Residential real estate Australia, Waterfront, Gated Communities

If you thought, like I did, LA was where the gated communities were, think again. We have them in Australia, too. My friend has just moved into one of the LA gated communities and they sound very bizarre. She said they are very quiet and people communicate via their letter boxes. I wonder whether it wouldn't be better to make the communities safer than to "gate" people into their homes. I can remember when Australians used to sleep outside and watch TV on their front verandahs. Australia used to literally live outside in the summer months.It was a great atmosphere.We kind of got that same feeling back in this area the day of the last federal election. I also visited a town in NZ where no one locked their doors. It was fantastic living like that and we all used to. Do we get what we are prepared to accept or have things changed so we can't change them back? What happened to respecting people's property and themselves? There were still violent outbreaks but it wasn't about burgling or mugging or getting someone you didn't know...and then there was always someone to answer to if you hurt someone. I guess communities owned their members. There isn't an easy answer, I know that and I know a lot of older people prefer these gated communities because they are vulnerable. I do not blame them. I just wish we didn't have to lock people into their homes like that. I heard an American on the national radio news programme saying since they had increased the death penalty in America the number of murders had gone down and that this had been proven across a number of independent university studies. I didn't want to hear that. I didn't want to know that capital punishment stopped murders. I hate capital punishment because I think we should be way past that as a society. I cannot believe we are into a second millennium and we have come no further in our behaviour. We have to be smarter than that.