A gated community (or walled community) is a form of residential community or housing estate containing strictly controlled entrances for pedestrians, bicycles, and automobiles, and often characterized by a closed perimeter of walls and fences. Gated communities usually consist of small residential streets and include various shared amenities. For smaller communities, these amenities may include only a park or other common area. For larger communities, it may be possible for residents to stay within the community for most daily activities. Gated communities are a type of common interest development, but are distinct from intentional communities.

For socio-historical reasons, in the developed world they exist primarily in the United States.

Given that gated communities are spatially a type of enclave, Setha M. Low, an anthropologist, has argued that they have a negative effect on the net social capital of the broader community outside the gated community. Some gated communities, usually called "guard-gated communities", are staffed by private security guards and are often home to high-value properties, and/or are set up as retirement villages.

Besides the services of gatekeepers, many gated communities provide other amenities. These may depend on a number of factors including geographical location, demographic composition, community structure, and community fees collected. When there are sub-associations that belong to master associations, the master association may provide many of the amenities. In general, the larger the association the more amenities that can be provided.

Amenities also depend on the type of housing. For example, single-family-home communities may not have a common-area swimming pool, since individual home-owners have the ability to construct their own private pools. A condominium, on the other hand, may offer a community pool, since the individual units do not have the option of a private pool installation.

Typical amenities offered can include one or more:

In Brazil, the most widespread form of gated community is called "condomínio fechado" (closed housing estate) and is the object of desire of the upper classes. Such a place is a small town with its own infrastructure (reserve power supply, sanitation, and security guards). The purpose of such a community is to protect its residents from exterior violence. The same philosophy is seen on closed buildings and most shopping centres (many of them can only be accessed from inside the parking lot or the garage).

In Mexico, the most common form of a gated community is called privada, fraccionamiento, or condominio, in which privadas and fraccionamientos are mostly composed of individual, single-family houses grouped, these may vary on size and shape, sometimes, houses will be individually developed and built while in others (primarily in fraccionamientos) houses are of the same design and shape. In fraccionamientos, these houses may have access to amenities within the gated zone as well, such as parks, gyms, party rooms, pools and maintenance by the residential's administration. Condominios are commonly similar to fraccionamientos and privadas, but applied in a scheme of apartment buildings.