Reply: Question about Townhouse vs. House‏

Fernando,

Thank you very much for your reply & suggestion! I thought of the same. Thanks for reaffirming it in my mind.

One thing you didn’t have chance to talk about in this post or any other (I searched through your blog extensively) is the definition of a “gated community”. Was it that the residents on a given street decided to organize and hire guards or were there special communities built with gates all around and a guard at the front? I guess both. Any lengthy discussion on how and where people prefer to live in Argentina today would be helpful.

Again, I appreciate your reply very much. Thanks for your time and god bless you for your hard, but very helpful posts.

Alex

Alex, that’s correct you have mostly two kinds of guarded communities.
First you have ordinary blocks where people get together and hire private security. This is often a post on street corners covering a neighborhood or part of it. What you get is what you pay in this case. It may be as little as paying an of duty cop trying to do some extra, to a private firm that both has posts on each corner and patrolling vehicles. This is common in most middle/upper middle class neighborhoods in Argentina.

Then you have gated communities that were specifically built that way. These too can be of the lower end type or better ones. The good ones will usually have a monitored double chain link fence perimeter, guards and patrols both along the perimeter and inside the community. The cheaper ones have poor security, lacking proper training, equipment and not enough man power. Its common to hear of robberies if the security isn’t up to the ever growing challenge set by criminals.

This final alternative, the community with good security, would be the best compromise when crime becomes a serious problem. Neighbors organizing on their own will never achieve a steady level of security in the medium or long run, everyone has other things to do eventually, job, family, it never lasts long when neighbors try to guard the area on their own. Hired security has proven to be more effective.
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FerFAL