The topography of the square compounds the sense of congestion, creating a kind of "nightmare" zone near the bottom of the hammock; to a pedestrian walking there, the crowds to the north and the south seem to be pressing down from above.
Since Sept. 16, when Blackwater guards opened fire in a crowded Baghdad square, the compound has begun to feel more like a prison, too.
Sprawling over 22 acres of Palo Alto, the 435,000 square feet compound is designed by famed architect Frank Gehry.
The US official, who spoke to VICE News on condition of anonymity, expressed frustration with the Iraqis' inability to go on the offensive and push IS out of the 14 square mile compound.
Inside the nerve center of NBC Sports' 75,000 square-foot compound, the chairman of NBC Sports happily controls the prime-time production.
The 18,000-square-foot compound can be reached only by means of a six-minute drive on a private switchback road.
"I look at the positive," said Jeter, who recently moved into a 30,875-square-foot compound in the Davis Island section of Tampa.
It still has its own newspaper and television station, and an internal bus service to ferry workers around its eight-square-kilometre compound.
Ms. Allen and her husband, Stuart, hired Alexander Gorlin, a Manhattan society architect, who partly buried their five-bedroom, 12,000-square-foot compound into the mountain for natural cooling and insulation, then heated it with geothermal pumps.
The United States is considering closing its original embassy building on Novinsky Boulevard and moving all operations deeper within the embassy's square-block compound because of security concerns, a senior diplomatic official said.
