Over the past few decades, Brazil has led the list of the most violent countries in the world. In particular, Rio de Janeiro’s statistics on violence have been compared to those of recent war conflicts. This paper analyses how violence has been spatialized in Rio, particularly after the crisis due to the loss of the status of federal capital in 1960s to Brasilia. The main case study is the invention and development of the gated community typology in Barra da Tijuca, a neighbourhood designed by Lucio Costa in the 1970s, after his success in designing Brasilia. This neighbourhood became not only the epicentre of urban investments in Rio for almost 50 years—culminating with hosting the Olympic games of 2016—but also the model for housing the emergent middle classes (and lower classes) of Rio and Brazil in the past decades. While the paper addresses the main political, social and economic problems associated with the gated community phenomenon—such as real estate speculation, peripheralisation, informality and ghettoization—it focuses on the spatial and morphological aspects of this typology. Instead of repeating the nostalgic mantra of the erasure of this typology, the paper proposes that it is necessary to advance alternative ways of planning within its modus operandi.