This article analyses the tendency of fragmentation in cities caused by the expansion of secure private condominiums that act as a "simulacrum", challenging city policies and citizenship patterns in contemporary cities. The text revolves around three contemporary urban structure forces (the private condos, gentrification and the verticalization of slums) to point out how advertising strategies activate class distinction and security devices, thus setting rules of selective social interaction between peers in private spaces, thereby strengthening the private and forceful path of public order as an answer to the crisis in contemporary cities. By studying the architectural shapes of such "closed communities", whose aesthetic style has been imported, and the symbolic and communication strategies used by real-estate ventures in Salvador, the article shows the denial of the city as a public space of social interaction, thus being a reflection of the private solutions applied to the contemporary city crisis within Globalisation.
city; architecture; spatial segregation; closed condominiums