One of the most bizarre sights in Bombay is a place called Hiranandani Gardens in the northern suburbs. For starters it’s not a garden, let alone many. It’s actually a massive chunk of high-rise apartment blocks sealed off from the surrounding landscape and built in a style one might unkindly call a parody of classical architecture.

The streets within the complex have names like Lake Boulevard and Orchard Avenue, rather a long shot from the Jogeshwari Vikhroli Link Road that leads up to whole thing. As for the buildings themselves they’re called things like Golden Oak, Glen Croft, and Tivoli.

There’s no doubting this is a piece of posh. Apartments in Hiranandani Gardens cost a fortune by any standards. For your crores (1 crore = 10 million rupees = €150,000) you get a wedge of Tivoli, hemmed in by some thousands of lookalike wedges it must be said. But you also get a ‘lifestyle’ in the shape of lawns (obviously manicured), a shopping mall bursting with brand names, Turkish baths, and such.

The place looked all terribly exotic when I first stumbled on it in 2001. Ten years later it doesn’t really, and that’s because the real estate agent down the road has plenty such offerings. A quick check gives me Portomaso, Ta’ Monita, Madliena Village (ex-Busietta Gardens), Fort Chambray, Fort Cambridge, Pendergardens, Tigné Point, and Ħal Sagħtrija in Gozo.

Don’t bother looking for forts, gardens, villages, or aromatic herbs, at least not unless you happen to be an optimist with a microscope and a stiff drink.

What you’ll find instead are apartments and more apartments, and some eye-watering price tags. Tears for some, saliva for others. My property-enlightened friends tell me sales are ‘encouraging’ and that this is the shape of things to come.

Quite apart from the fancy names, these ‘high-profile developments’ tend to have quite a lot in common. First, they’re built in such a way as to barnacle out their surroundings.

Portomaso is probably the prime example, what with the whole thing designed to look out to the Mediterranean (over the shoulders of some rather expensive toys) and give its back to Paceville.

Malta’s bunch share this quality with a tribe that’s numerous, growing fast, and spread out pretty much all over the world. I refer to ‘gated communities’, although most local examples are not literally ‘gated’ (the old Busietta Gardens was an exception).

But then we know you don’t need a fence to have a fence. Strategic ‘landscaping’ will do just as well as will CCTV, forests of signs (‘Dogs on Leash’, ‘No Noise’, ‘No Bicycles’, and so on), and ‘friendly’ security staff.

Irrespective of the extent to which they physically exclude, the whole point about these places is that they are enclaves. That is to say, they portion out a space and proceed to convert it into something that’s different from its neighbours.

With respect to the local item, a browse through the online and printed publicity highlights three key selling points. The first is ‘exclusivity’ and high standards of finishing. Not for them the wobbly paving and dodgy wiring of the average Maltese kerb and home. This is the real thing, imported from quality destinations by quality developers for quality clients.

The second declared reason behind the price tag is what we might call ‘community’. The artists’ impressions (and this is lucrative business for dreamers who can put pen to paper) show shiny happy people holding hands and strolling in sanitised spaces, united by old-school bonds of neighbourly love and care.

Of course, it helps if one’s neighbours are as classy and rich as one is – one wouldn’t want some ill-shod miscreant to break the spell.

The third factor, and possibly the most seductive, is ‘lifestyle’. It seems to me that in this department enclaves come in two types (sometimes combined with intriguing results, shall we say).

The first type are preached on the grounds of ‘contemporary urban’ living. They are an attempt to replicate the city and its perceived charms. Pendergardens, for example, “offers all the amenities of a metropolitan centre”. Quite a wondrous thing in St Julian’s, which being no rural hamlet is no Tokyo either.

The second type are perhaps more charming because they claim to serve up an Arcadian wonderland which would make Poussin blush. The pick of the crop must be Ħal Sagħtrija.

Here the village gossip (aka the web page) tells us that apartment owners “can enjoy the fresh produce from the fields which are part of the property”. They will also be able to play boċċi in the garden, bake the ‘traditional Gozitan’ way in a stone oven, pray to San Ġorġ Preca in the village square, and do their laundry at the bespoke għajn tal-ħasselin (unless they prefer the maid and laundry service, also available). I’m not making this up – watch the online video.

Gated communities have come under considerable fire from all manner of critics.

The left-handed school have pointed out that inward-lookingness may not necessarily be the best route to a functional urbanity. Others hold that ‘amenities’ and ‘lifestyle’ are just a bit of spin that developers use to charge more for less.

I’m not necessarily interested in all of that. I’d rather prefer to look at what enclaves tell us about our environment broadly defined. I’m not surprised, for example, that ‘standards’ and ‘finishing’ should be deemed so ‘exclusive’ in Malta. Or that a car-free zone should sell so well in Sliema.

As for the Arcadia up north, I’d rather not ponder on what makes the rural idyll feel so unique. The risk is that the feeling and the development are related, in more ways than one.

mafalzon@hotmail.com