The social and spatial implications of community action to enclose space: Guarded neighbourhoods in Selangor, Malaysia

Abstract

The article examines the social and spatial implications of guarded neighbourhoods: resident-generated enclosed areas in urban Malaysia. Neoliberal government practices provide a regulatory context within which residents organise associations, levy fees, erect barricades, and hire guards to control formerly public streets and spaces. Citizen action to create guarded neighbourhoods concretise emerging class boundaries and reinforce social segregation within cities already noted for having significant ethnic disparities. Guarded neighbourhoods in Malaysia simultaneously reflect social exclusion—of non-residents, lower classes, migrants, and ethnic ‘others’—and cohesive social action of the politically and economically powerful to produce neighbourhood identity and community coherence through enclosure.