The inside and the outside: The ways of dwelling a vertical gated community in the city of Córdoba, from an ethnographic approach

Abstract

This paper analyzes the ways of dwelling of the residents of a tower complex surrounded by walls and fences, located in Córdoba Argentina. This residential typology was named by the construction company as vertical gated community. The analysis is based on ethnographic work carried out in the group of towers located in the west of the city, next to an important avenue. The analysis, from a relational anthropological approach to the urban, questions the studies that show gated communities as enclaves and emphasize the isolation and enclosure of its residents. With this approach, the paper examines residents consumption practices, social networks and daily mobilities, in order to investigate the ways in which the interviewees build the relationships between the inside and outside of the vertical gated community. The article shows the relevance of researching the dwelling logics in gated communities through the experiences of its residents, in order to question the idea of limit that walls represent and approach the continuities between these spaces and the city.