The term "gated community" has a negative connotation for most planners, and perhaps for significant numbers of people with active social consciences. These are suburban, elitist, places - the thinking goes - where self indulging economic parasites go to live out their fantasies, and retreat from their responsibilities.

A one to one conversation with a developer, or resident, of a gated community will produce horror stories of a whole range of assaults on persons and property. We have a right to protect ourselves and loved ones from these threats, they say. Oscar Newman sold many copies of his book on "defensible communities."

Overreactions? Probably.

But walls are not new, nor are predators.

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Today is the beginning of all future time. Yesterday is past and we can do nothing about it. The present passes by so swiftly that we can scarcely touch it. Only tomorrow is amenable to our plans and our schemes, and so it is for tomorrow that we plan.

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Today is the beginning of all future time. Yesterday is past and we can do nothing about it. The present passes by so swiftly that we can scarcely touch it. Only tomorrow is amenable to our plans and our schemes, and so it is for tomorrow that we plan.

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This essay is allegorical, and rife with broad sweeping generalities. That said, and humbly begging your pardon, let us proceed.

All across the country concerned people are experimenting with converting public schools into private schools. Charter schools, magnet schools, vouchers. There is the perception that as public institutions the schools have become so mired in red tape of their own making that they are no longer capable of "teaching".

In a sense, these efforts are something like taking just the hands of the watch to the watch repair shop, saying that "they don't point to the right time." Read on.

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It's so bizarre and so commonplace that the story rarely makes p.A-16 in the daily newspaper. Unemployment rises, Wall Street rejoices, and vice versa.

A rising unemployment means that businesses are downsizing. As far as Wall Street is concerned, the best possible of all businesses would be one that had no employees at all. Of course if all businesses had no employees there wouldn't be anyone with money to buy the products or services of the businesses. But we're talking long range here and if there is one thing Wall Street isn't -it's long range. They have people programming their buys 24 hours a day, taking "advantage" of the most minute fluctuations in markets around the world. Hey, down three quarters when the portfolios run to the billions - well, that ain't hay.

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It's so bizarre and so commonplace that the story rarely makes p.A-16 in the daily newspaper. Unemployment rises, Wall Street rejoices, and vice versa.

A rising unemployment means that businesses are downsizing. As far as Wall Street is concerned, the best possible of all businesses would be one that had no employees at all. Of course if all businesses had no employees there wouldn't be anyone with money to buy the products or services of the businesses. But we're talking long range here and if there is one thing Wall Street isn't -it's long range. They have people programming their buys 24 hours a day, taking "advantage" of the most minute fluctuations in markets around the world. Hey, down three quarters when the portfolios run to the billions - well, that ain't hay.

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In connection with the PBS TV series "Power of Myth" Joseph Campbell wrote, "The rise and fall of civilizations can be seen to have been largely a function of the integrity and cogency of their supporting canons of myth...when the mythology of a culture no longer works, there follows a sense of both disassociation and a quest for new meaning."

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I have some knowledge of the historical roles of central cities, but what is the role today, if any? The central city is certainly not the hub of transportation anymore, nor is it the commercial/retail center. There is very little manufacturing in the center. In Detroit, General Motors Tech is out on the 8 Mile Road, isn't it?

So, what's left? Well, the City and County Complex is probably downtown, and the courts, thus offices full of lawyers. There may be a theater or two, but there are theaters elsewhere - outside the centers of cities, in Overland Park KS, for example..

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