Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Wiktionary
n. A residential area with restricted access, such as by a locked gate or guard post
Wikipedia
In its modern form, a gated community (or walled community) is a form of residential community or housing estate containing strictly controlled entrances for pedestrians, bicycles, and automobiles, and often characterized by a closed perimeter of walls and fences. Gated communities usually consist of small residential streets and include various shared amenities. For smaller communities, this may be only a park or other common area. For larger communities, it may be possible for residents to stay within the community for most daily activities. Gated communities are a type of common interest development, but are distinct from intentional communities.
Given that gated communities are spatially a type of enclave, Setha M. Low, among other anthropologists, has argued that they have a negative effect on the net social capital of the broader community outside the gated community. Some gated communities, usually called guard-gated communities, are staffed by private security guards and are often home to high-value properties, and/or are set up as retirement villages. Some gated communities are secure enough to resemble fortresses and are intended as such.
Usage examples of "gated community".
He lived in Glen Ellyn Cove, a gated community for Whale Rock's considerable wealthy population.
Safe Harbour was thirty-five minutes north of San Francisco, and more than half of it was a gated community, with houses sitting just behind the dune, all along the beach.
Among them was a gated community of expensive homes and a new banking and financial tower that were going up downtown.
Now, thanks to left-wing commissars and their sensitivity police, Richard Oulton's gated community has more in common with a police state than with the freedom of America.
Nice house, gated community with Security patrolling, what could go wrong?
With my higher salary as a regular teacher, Aurea and I were able to rent a one-bedroom house in Seagate, a gated community at the western tip of Coney Island.
When this Company HQ had been built, thirty years earlier, the gated community in which it was situated was regularly patrolled, to say nothing of being perched so far up on such a steep hill as to deter most criminals.
She could live anywhere she chose, and Jess devoutly wished her mother would move back to the exclusive, gated community in Laguna Hills she'd been living in before the accident.