Estilo de vida y arquitectura de consumo: Los fraccionamientos cerrados en la ciudad de Hermosillo

The urban morphology derived from gated communities is today the prevailing model in the average size cities and Mexican metropolises. From the case study of the city of Hermosillo, the gated communities are explored as depository of ethical and aesthetic codes and meanings socially constructed. Exposing the points of view of the promoters and bidders of the housing model, while revealing different meanings that residents confer to both the house and the urbanization, as well as to the fact of inhabiting them, right in the urban watershed of Late 20th and early 21st centuries. For most Mexican cities, this would be the period of embedding the confined, enclosed or fenced housing developments.
The hypothesis that originates the investigation refers to the typology of the gated community as an object of consumption for ostentation: the urban and architectural typology of the closed neighborhood responds to the emulation of an image perceived as prestigious or corresponding to the elites’ lifestyle. Thus, the lifestyle is confronted with the homogeneity and social and architectural predictability, with exclusion and with the sense of community, to expose the benefits and broken guarantees of urban closure.