Hearing the words "gated community," most people in this country probably think of America -- and not with admiration. The phrase, after all, denotes privilege and exclusion, fear and distaste, not unlike those more heavily freighted labels of the past, "pale" or "ghetto."

Some critics of President George W. Bush's administration have even written off the whole country as a kind of gated community of the mind. But apparently that's way off the mark, as some creative dissenters in Los Angeles showed last week.

Last Sunday morning, a group of architects, artists and urban planners calling themselves Heavy Trash put up bright orange, 4-meter-high viewing platforms outside the gates of three of the city's elite private neighborhoods. The idea was that ordinary folk outside the wall might like to clamber up and take a peek at the well-to-do going about their affairs inside. The action was short-lived, since the platforms were gone by Monday. And it was largely symbolic, since people can see into those neighborhoods from outside anyway. But the point was brilliantly made: Walls and gates are controversial.