REFLECTION OF FORTIFIED SEGREGATION ON URBAN SPACES: A CRITICAL APPROACH TO THE THRESHOLDS IN ANKARA (original) (raw)

2020, Theory and Research in Architecture, Planning and Design II - book

Segregation is the separation of social groups into particular roles and/ or spaces (Norton&Mercier, 2019; Ritzer, 2007). Also, urban segregation is a concept used to indicate the fragmentation between different social groups in an urban environment. Design is an important indicator of social life, since there is a strong relationship between spatial arrangements and lifestyles of people. With the support of right design decisions, it is pos- sible to achieve a social integration which contributes to the sustainable community. The city is a place of highest concentration of power and culture of a community which composes a social entity. Density and heterogeneity are the main features of the social and cultural spaces (Simmel, 1950). And neighburhoods as the smallest representative unit of the city integ- rates people through the development of social practices in everyday life (Roitman, 2005). The selection of living territories results in a fragmenta- tion in the city which constitutes a clustering as places of different groups. These groups, which based on the homogeneity of the neighbourhoods start to define themselves in terms of “us” and “them” (Rapaport, 1977). Moreover these places differ in lifestyles, symbol systems and environ- mental quality although they stay near each other. Although the tendency of similar people to live together is rejected in the theory, settling in this way have been a reality of our cities (Rapaport, 1977). The most obvious and clear example of this segregation can be ob- served on neighborhood scale. Neighborhoods are one particular type of homogeneous area. People choose their neighborhoods related to shared images and a desire to preserve a lifestyle, religion or culture. Reasons of clustering in neighborhoods can be differentiated in time. For examp- le, even in the medieval cities of the West and in the traditional Ottoman city, the neighborhoods display a heterogeneous socio-economic structure, although they include religious and ethnic groups. With the emergence of capitalist society, the capital accumulation is concentrated in the cities; instead of being attached to religious and ethnic identity, it started to dif- ferentiate depending on income and class identity (Kurtuluş, 2003). In to- day’s world, the essence of people’s economic, social and cultural relations determine their consumption and activity patterns. The individual is at the forefront of what he or she consumes as mentioned by Erich Fromm (1976) with the sentence “I am what I have and what I consume”. Moreover, the reflection of this lifestyle can directly be observed on the spatial articulati- on. For this reason, economic restructuring triggers changes in the global city’s structure (Maloutas, 2004). As a consequence, while the city is being spatially fragmented; at the same time, society is fragmented by socio-e- conomic and cultural divisions. Process of fragmentation in physical and social structure are mutually interdependent (Bilsel, 2006). As a result, the city becomes segregated, consisting of countless walled-islands with divi- ded social groups. In this study, it is aimed to answer the questions of why socio-spatial segregation come into life in order to mediate a change for the future and reveal the consequences of this fragmentation within the city. Additionally, the spatial segregation process of Ankara and the formation of walled is- lands by the upper income group has been discussed and the fictions of these habitats have been examined through the Merkez Ankara Project.