Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: gated communities and the lure of the good life -- Making middle-class spaces: privilege, territoriality and the moral geographies of exclusion -- Urban reform, the new middle-class and the emergence of gated communities in Shanghai -- Imagineering suburbia: contested representations of the Chinese dream home -- Seeking privacy and seclusion: private property, individualism and neoliberal subjectivities -- Maintaining order and civility: purified spaces and the paradox of gated living -- Beyond the gates: a geographical-moral critique.