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It is essential to consider security requirements at the planning stage.

Creating a successful residential community involves responding to a number of different considerations. Commercial Outdoor Design reports.

Opinion on self-contained or gated communities tends to go one of two ways.

Either people are in favour of their existence seeing them as the ultimate in exclusivity and a place with a strong sense of community, or they deride them as isolating people from the heart of a city and limiting human interaction.

Whatever your feelings, they are a concept that is growing in popularity in the GCC. One of the best-known residential communities is Arabian Ranches located on Emirates road in Dubai.

Developed by Emaar Properties, the self-contained community contains a number of villas and town houses, as well as a school, and community centre containing 20 retail outlets. Other examples in Dubai include The Lakes, The Springs and The Meadows.

Under construction in Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, is Al Khobar Lakes. Developed by Emaar, the community is set to cover 2.6 million square metres and will include nine villages, a mosque, schools, a shopping centre among other amenities.

The development is promoted as the first lakefront gated residential community.

Understanding the planning process is one of the crucial stages in designing a great community, according to Todd Stermer, manager urban and regional planning at international architectural and design practice Atkins.

"An urban planning team needs to understand and do careful analysis of the conditions that are presented at the site, both current and projected," he says.

"You need to understand who you are building for, what is the market. You need to understand the existing site conditions, the opportunities there."

Points that need to be considered at the planning stage, he says, include the topography, the infrastructure and roads in the location, the views, solar orientation, and the existing land use surrounding the area as well as any proposed plans for development or expansion of the area.

Without this basic knowledge of the proposed site, it will be difficult to make the design a success, says Stermer.

"If the design team doesn't understand the planning process, they are not going to come up with a good design to begin with. They will miss opportunities, will miss constraints, you'll end up with a community that has problems," he comments, citing lack of proper road access as an example of the type of problem that can occur.

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