Hi,

I am Aman, and this safe space is where I am most raw with my thoughts, hop on if you'd like to interact with them :))

A recent conversation with an old school friend about his mom's grocery business really got me thinking. It's fascinating how India has always had a miniature model of a charter city. Such a model seems possible in India only due to two specific factors.

• Low trust economy
• Status driven society

One aspect of my fascination has always been about exploring the difficulty of creating wealth and whenever I think about such models it amazes me on how people operate in general and the importance of a community.

This time I will try to explore my reasoning and understanding of how the gated society model works, all of this is my personal opinion and I may be wrong here.

Gated Societies

In India it is very common for people to live in gated societies and not own standalone houses, partly because of safety reasons and the conveniences which Indians don't necessarily consider as necessities but rather leisure.

These are some of the reasons living in a gated society makes sense in India and can be viewed as a self sustaining economic engine.

[Health]

let's take working out as the first example,

A majority of Indians still don't consider working out/exercise as a necessity in life, it's more of a lifestyle market in India but when such a service is offered to them for free as a commodity in a gated society it changes their perspective about health,

The mimetic tendency of working out when living in a gated society is much higher compared to living in a standalone building, gated society shifts the angle from which people view health, rather than seeing it as a lifestyle change they start to visualise it as a commodity or necessity partly because of their mimetic desire to belong to that particular community.

This may only be true for 20% of the people living there and working out can still be arguable,

but a gated society model extends every aspect of health, having grown up in a gated society I can surely attest that my mother would have never picked up the habit of walking if not for a gated society,

The core reasoning for her walking with her friends in a society may not be health but gated societies in India is a much better accelerator of health for individuals compared to stand alone houses.

[Business/ Wealth Creation]

Coming to my starting point, which provoked me into thinking about this model at a greater depth.

There is a plethora of businesses that operate purely within the boundaries of such societies and the most interesting part about these businesses is that these businesses may not always be for financial motives, most of these businesses are just operated out of fun or boredom.

Living in small shared communities make it very easy to work on localised problem statements within the community or work on hobby projects, there comes an added distribution with a gated society provided you socialise enough.

Here's an example of some businesses I myself have seen growing up in and around gated societies at various cities

• Home Boutiques
• Health Chambers and clinics
• Tiffin Services
• Tuition Classes
• Accounting Services

and many more, It's fascinating how gated societies enable opportunities for wealth creation within boundaries.

[Exclusiveness/Community]

Health and wealth are definitely some interesting aspects of a gated society but there is more to it,

Living in a gated society enables people to signal that they are a part of an exclusive niche community, signalling their status.

Car stickers is a perfect example of gated societies signalling themselves, it enables people to signal to the outside world that they belong to that particular community of people.

Gated societies have other forms of signalling their exclusiveness to the outside world such as cricket tournaments and workshops by third party brands.

India is a country known for the depth of it's cultural diversity and this is depicted perfectly in a gated society model where every Indian festival is celebrated, giving people a sense of community.

Community plays a huge role when comparing the economics of a group of human beings living together, it is very interesting that we get to see it play at such a scale in such a model.

There is a some form of alignment with internet communities but these are more involved with each other and their model of operation is fairly democratic, which makes for an interesting observation of politics and various aspects of human behavior within such societies.

Analogy with charter cities

Charter cities as an idea is not new, it's a very old economic model, with some very good examples,

I will refrain from trying to explain the idea of charter cities in this blog post, mostly because I think there are references which does a much better job outlining such models

The most interesting idea to me is the resemblance of charter cities with a gated society, both have particular set of rules and are opt in communities which appeals to only some.

[Example]

Some gated societies have rules that prohibits them from hanging clothes outside their windows

The political aspect of a gated society is also similar in some ways,

The society as a whole follows the local state laws but the laws and rules inside can differ,

even though it's a huge incentive for the local government to give these societies the power to have localised laws, I am yet to see a society which has these.

If we just treat gated societies as one whole unit, it might be a good idea for a city to have more and more gated societies,

communities will take care of facilitating wealth creation within boundaries which will help people in escaping their current economic level, if looking purely from an an angle where the only metric is quality of life, I think gated societies are a net positive for any city.

Still a WIP

I will iterate on this blog post if I feel like doing so, currently this piece contains all facets of my thinking and I personally think some pieces are better left unfinished ;)