In my hometown of Lake Zurich, Illinois, the main borders are due to streets dividing parts of the city. There are a couple of gated communities in Lake Zurich, but the largest one is called Wynstone. Wynstone is located on 750 acres with 437 homesites (Wynstone Property Owner’s Association). Surrounding the entirety of the community is a large stone fence. While this is very much so a physical boundary, it also creates a social boundary. There are surveillance cameras set up all around the Wynstone Wall and anyone caught trying to climb over the fence will be picked up by Wynstone Security and possibly arrested. They are really trying to keep people who aren’t from Wynstone out- to get through the gates, the person you are visiting must call ahead and give them your name, description, and license plate number. The houses in Wynstone are grandiose and elaborate; they are priced anywhere between $700,000 and several million dollars (Realtor.com).
Obviously, the people living in these houses tend to be more well off than the rest of the community. The economic difference creates a lifestyle difference, which, in turn, creates a social gap. While children raised in Wynstone spend their time taking golf lessons and joining the swim team, most children in the rest of Lake Zurich spend their time in the forest or at the parks. A lot of the members of Wynstone have a very elitist attitude. Since a lot of the Wynstone kids grew up within the gates of Wynstone, they tend to stay friends throughout K-12, and are usually the kids that are considered the most “popular”. A physical border has created a social border. Another physical border that created a social border as well was the Berlin Wall. While the Wynstone gate is a much less extreme example, they have a lot of similarities. Both barriers created an “us versus them” attitude. For borders such as rivers, the difference in people can often be blurred. However, with the gated community and the Berlin Wall, it was one or another. The Berlin Wall split up many families who were left unable to visit each other after it’s construction. Built for the opposite reason that the Wynstone Wall was built, the Berlin Wall was built in order to keep East Germans in. This fence, however, was topped with barbed while and had more than 300 guard towers (Independent). If you were caught trying to escape from the East to the West over the wall, you would be shot on sight. Due to the shoot-to-kill order, at least 128 people were killed trying to escape the East (History). Thousands were imprisoned saying the wrong name at the border or mentioning to the incorrect person that they were thinking about fleeing.
Beyond being a physical border, the Berlin Wall also created a lifestyle border, although this wasn’t a choice for many of the residents living in East Berlin. In the East, people had no freedoms. If they wrote something critical of the GDR, they could be banished from the East. If they demonstrated against the government, they would be arrested. They lived under complete and utter repression and the only thing separating them from normal life in the West was concrete.