Exile from Exile - The resettlement of slum dwellers into social housing following forced eviction: A Comparative Analysis of Cases in Istanbul and 4 Cities (original) (raw)
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Turkish metropolitan cities are facing massive urban transformation processes. Recently a new law to rebuild existing housing stock was accepted by the parliament whose aim is to restructure the existing building structure with better quality of housing to prevent the people from disaster. This proposed restructuring process is primarily determined by the rise of construction and real estate industry in line with global neo-liberal economic practices. Yet especially in the poorer areas are to be relocations and breakdown of social support systems; thus creating tensions between local authorities and people, as well as increasing social inequalities. The paper deliberates on this tension with fieldwork on the squatter area in Hamidiye Neighbourhood, Istanbul.
Urban Studies, 2010
Since 2001, there has been a radical shift in the governance of urban land and housing markets in Turkey from a ‘populist’ to a ‘neo-liberal’ mode. Large ‘urban transformation projects’ (UTPs) are the main mechanisms through which a neo-liberal system is instituted in incompletely commodified urban areas. By analysing two UTPs implemented in an informal housing zone and an inner-city slum in Istanbul, the paper discusses the motivations behind, the socioeconomic consequences of and grassroots resistance movements to the new urban regime. The analysis shows that the UTPs predominantly aim at physical and demographic upgrading of their respective areas rather than improving the living conditions of existing inhabitants, thus instigating a process of property transfer and displacement. It also demonstrates that the property/ tenure structure of an area plays the most important role in determining the form and effectiveness of grassroots movements against the UTPs.
Ecology and the Environment, 2015
Focusing on the Tarlabaşı urban renewal project in Istanbul, this paper examines Turkey's recent implementation of urban regeneration policies for the purpose of restructuring urban land markets. Turkey's current urban regeneration model is premised on demolishing the whole regeneration area, and rebuilding it, together with local governments and the private sector. The implementation of this model has led to the restructuring of property markets in low-income housing areas, through the regularization/legalization of tenure structures, and revalorization of the areas. It is claimed that this model solves economic and socio-spatial problems, and therefore places Istanbul in the so-called global city hierarchy. However, as the Tarlabaşı urban renewal project demonstrates, the Turkish State's regeneration model led to evictions, increasing the housing problems of the poor, deepening their poverty, and terminating the survival strategies they had developed over the years through informal economic and social networks. This paper aims to analyse the impacts this model has had, by illuminating socio-spatial aspects of the Tarlabaşı neighbourhood such as labour market dynamics, income levels, and daily life practices.
In Turkey, regional inequalities in terms of socioeconomic differences have been obvious for many decades which have been resulted in internal migration from eastern to western parts of the country. Unemployment, lack of priority in agricultural production on eastern regions, desire to increase wealth, blood revenge, desire to have better education, political reasons and terror seem to be main reasons for internal migration. In addition, many significant problems have emerged due to internal migration such as unauthorized housing with squatter settlements, conurbation, cultural degeneration, unemployment, education, health and physical infrastructure problems, and increasing crime rate. Most of these immigrants created their own living spaces by themselves as squatter settlements in an illegal manner and created informal housing. Istanbul in Turkey is the most prominent global city in Turkey, and at the same time, one of the most affected cities because of squatter settlements. In this research, Ayazma-Tepeüstü Regions in İstanbul will be studied. This neighborhood was created by immigrants from eastern parts of Turkey as an informal housing area. The residents in this area have suffered from gentrification and its results on existing residents by being forced to involuntary displacement, which will constitute the main content of research. In this research, predetermined concepts will be discussed over Ayazma-Tepeüstü Regions, and in which way the people living in this region were affected will be evaluated.
V. INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY URBAN ISSUES CONFERENCE ON INFORMALITY CUI '17 CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS, 2017
Today, tools, used to generate income on urban spaces and take a share of this income are usually the “urban transformation” projects. Even though it is claimed that urban transformation projects are carried out to improve the conditions of urban spaces and conditions of living, it is seen that as the result of these projects, cities are becoming new areas of intervention for the private sector through the medium of central governments and local governments. These transformations bring with them various social problems like social segregation on urban space scale, polarization, routing some citydwellers out of their houses, forcing the poor segments of the society to the outskirts of the city. In this regard, it is possible to say that a large part of the urban transformation projects have serious problems in terms of the right to the city and that certain sections of the society violate the right to housing. Bottom-dwellers are the ones that suffer from violation of right to housing the most, which in fact is much more than just a housing right and urban transformation projects usually turn into the struggle of this segment of the society for their right to housing. However most of the time local and central government overlooks at this situation. In this context, this study aims to address the struggle for right to housing over Tozkoporan urban transformation, one of the best examples of urban transformation projects planned to be implemented in Istanbul. Within the scope of this study, in the light of data acquired as the result of in-depth interviews made with actors of the urban transformation project planned to be carried out at Tozkoparan, the aim is to discuss urban transformation on the concepts of both the right to city and right to housing and the reasons for not experienced of participatory transformation.
International Planning Studies, 2014
There is growing interest in the transformation of urban citizenship and the changing right to the city of the urban poor under neoliberal restructuring of cities in the Global South. This article examines a 'squatter settlement transformation project' in Istanbul that is intended to contribute towards the transformation of Istanbul into a global city. The transformation projects are based on private homeownership, incorporate the urban poor into a new 'property regime' and allocate them differentiated access to housing in the city. Using qualitative data, this article traces the unequal outcomes of the project for its displaced residents and demonstrates the emergence of 'differentiated urban citizenship'. This emergent urban citizenship regime in Turkish cities organizes the distribution of substantive housing rights based on social inequalities among the urban poor, and thus consolidates and perpetuates these inequalities in society.
The Isolation and Exclusion of the Poor During the Urban Transformation in Istanbul: Tarlabaşi Case
2015
Urban transformation" became an important component of the political discourse in Turkey after the 1999 Marmara Earthquake. However, the implementations of urban transformation in İstanbul dates further back. In 1970s, the decentralization of industry was included in the plans among the policies for the city. As a consequence of the neoliberal policies adopted by the Turkish government in the 1980s, urban transformation evolved hand in hand with the market economy. The relocation of the heavy industrial facilities out of the city and the transformation of historic urban centers and squatter areas were listed on the agenda. It was argued that urban transformation implementations would rehabilitate illegal settlements, the housing stock and urban environments of poor quality and the deteriorated historic urban fabric, paving the road to attract foreign investments and to create new employment opportunities. Within this context, İstanbul is envisioned to become a cultural, touristic and financial center. Especially in the 1990s, as a result of a series of advances in the financial and real estate markets, capital gain in İstanbul became the most profitable realm of capital saving strategies in similarity to the global economy. High profit margins led to the demolition of the neighborhoods where land tenure was problematic and which inhabited economically disadvantaged groups. These neighborhoods were recreated to include office spaces, malls, hotels, restaurants, housing estates and residential towers for the attraction of the middle and upper-middle income groups. Similar to the rest of the world, such a process leads to the isolation and exclusion of the low-income inhabitants from the neighborhoods which are gentrified. Indeed, the majority of the inhabitants in the neighborhoods which undergo urban transformation have to sell their residences for extremely low prices, cannot afford to return back to the areas where they used to live; and therefore, are forced to relocate to the poorer neighborhoods on the peripheries of the city. Thus, cities are transformed into reserved islands, which are clearly split into parts by income groups, and structured to minimize the encounters of different socioeconomic groups. Rather than protecting the public interest, urban transformation revolves around the forces of the market economy. This global trend can be clearly observed in İstanbul.
Changing Forms and Strategies of State Intervention in the Housing of the Poor in Istanbul
2013
In this thesis, these two interrelated issues of restructuring of the state are explored both in 'vertical' level relations, which are the relations between different scales of the state (rescaling of the state) and in 'horizontal' level practices, which are differentiated interventions of the state at different localities at the same time. Hence, the main argument is that the restructuring of the state in Istanbul is a spatial and a scalar process that varies by class struggle. v vi TABLE OF CONTENTS