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A Gecekondu Transformation Housing Estate As Site of Multiple Discrepancies

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A Gecekondu Transformation Housing Estate As Site of Multiple Discrepancies INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN AND REGIONAL RESEARCH 425 DOI:10.1111/1468-2427.12349 — FORMALIZATION BY THE STATE, RE-INFORMALIZATION BY THE PEOPLE: A Gecekondu Transformation Housing Estate as Site of Multiple Discrepancies tahire erman Abstract This article demonstrates residents’ transformative practices and discusses atten­ dant outcomes to contribute to an understanding of state­built housing estates for peo­ ple affected by urban transformation projects. It draws upon ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a social housing estate (K­TOKI) in the Northern Ankara Entrance Urban Transformation Project (NAEUTP). It addresses questions on why formalization of infor­ mal housing takes place today, under what conditions it is countered by re­informalization practices, and what the outcomes of this process are. As informal housing became for­ malized by NAEUTP, gecekondu dwellers were forced into formalized spaces and lives within K­TOKI, which was based on a middle­class lifestyle in its design and its legally required central management. Informality re­emerged in K­TOKI when the state’s housing institution, in response to the estate’s poor marketability, moved out, allowing residents to reappropriate spaces to meet their needs and form their own management system. When cultural norms that are inscribed in the built environment and financial norms that treat residents as clients conflict with everyday practices and financial capabilities, the urban poor increasingly engage in acts of informality. I argue that the outcome of this informality in a formal context is a site of multiple discrepancies. Introduction Rent generation from urban land has been a major tool of capital accumulation within global capitalism. It has led to intervention in informal housing areas via urban transformation projects (UTPs).1 This article investigates the outcomes of formaliza­ tion of informal housing as squatter houses are demolished and their residents relo­ cated to state­built apartment blocks. In the literature, the formalization of squatter settle ments is discussed exclusively in terms of land tenure, and the main arguments are framed around the question of whether owners of squatter housing should receive land titles (Benjamin, 2004; Handzic, 2010)–– that is, whether informal settlements should be transformed into formal private property regimes (Kuyucu, 2014). The discussion develops further on the basis of ‘rights of possession’ versus ‘rights of property’ (Neuwirth, 2005). Hence the literature on the formalization of squatter housing fails to go beyond the question of legalization. This article aims to fill this gap by defining formalization as regulation of the lives of squatter housing owners through state­led UTPs, by (1) incorporating them into the housing market via mortgage loans (Karaman, 2013a), and (2) relocating them to housing estates designed and managed by professionals. The article is based on an ethnographic study of a The research for this article was supported by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK), project no. 109K360. 1 While the term ‘slum renewal projects’ is commonly used in the literature, these are called ‘urban transformation projects’ or UTPs in Turkey. © 2016 urban research publications limited ERMAN 426 gecekondu2 transformation housing estate,3 built for those affected by the biggest urban transformation project in the Turkish capital. Urban restructuring has been on the agenda of the Turkish government since the early 2000s: the Islamist AKP (Justice and Development Party) won the 2002 elec­ tions and has remained in office since. The government declared war against gecekondu settlements, announcing its aim to clean cities from such ‘tumours’ via UTPs–– essentially the ‘neoliberal market­making tools’ of the government (Kuyucu and Ünsal, 2010: 54). A critical literature has developed regarding UTPs in Turkey, pointing out the problems they have created for the urban poor. The formalization of homeownership via mortgage loans is at the centre of these criticisms. Displacement and dispossession, along with forced relocation, are emphasized in descriptions of the outcomes of UTPs in the literature (Baysal, 2010; Kuyucu and Ünsal, 2010; Karaman, 2013a). In the litera­ ture on gecekondu transformation estates, terms such as ‘urban captivity’ (Bartu­Candan and Kolluoğlu, 2008), ‘relocated poverty’ (Bartu­Candan and Kolluoğlu, 2009) and ‘robotic lives’ (Karaman, 2013a) have been introduced to conceptualize the unfavour­ able conditions that are created for those who are displaced and forcibly relocated to these estates. Relocated residents are cast as victims, as they are forced into a physical envi ronment that conflicts with their way of life and into a loan system that conflicts with their financial situation (Bartu­Candan and Kolluoğlu, 2008; 2009; Baysal, 2010; Schäfers, 2010; Karaman, 2013a). This victimization literature is an important intro­ duction to an attempt at understanding UTPs by prioritizing disadvantaged populations. It supports the fact that, despite some resistance taking place in some UTPs (Karaman, 2014; Lelandais, 2014), people fail to organize themselves collectively once they are relo­ cated in their new housing estates and are brought into the banking system via mort­ gage loans. Yet it is necessary to pay attention to the question of to what extent and in what ways this population can be active in shaping their new environment4 so that we can develop a more detailed understanding of the outcomes of UTPs. In this article, I propose to draw attention to this issue in the hope that it will bring a more dynamic view and more nuanced insights into gecekondu transformation housing estates. As I shall describe in the rest of the article, the informalization5 of the estate I use as the research site is observed through the practices of residents, who appropriate space to make it responsive to their needs and preferences, as well as through their efforts to set up their own block management system. I then proceed to ask how we should understand the transformation of the estate by residents, both in physical and managerial terms, in response to their cultural preferences and economic situation. A further weakness in the literature on UTPs is the treatment of the gecekondu population as homogeneous, thus neglecting the heterogeneity within it. The gecekondu population is quite diverse in terms of aspirations and economic resources, as well as ethnicity and religious affiliation. This article draws attention to the diversity of resi­ dents and of conflicts between different groups of residents over their estate. In the section that follows, I first discuss the question of why informal housing, tolerated by the state for decades, is now being formalized through state intervention, and what the effect of this has been on the lives of the squatter population. In my discus­ sion I differentiate between the pre­1980s, a time that was characterized by a national developmentalist economy and populist politics, and the post­1980s, characterized by 2 The term gecekondu refers to squatter housing in Turkey; it literally means ‘built overnight’. 3 I call housing estates built by the state in order to relocate the gecekondu population whose houses are demolished in UTPs ‘gecekondu transformation housing estates’. 4 This active involvement of residents in shaping their new environment can be broadly referred to as their agency. However, because of the loaded nature of the term, I prefer to use the former expression. 5 Informalization is understood as activities that fall outside the rules and regulations of the established system. In this article it concerns challenging the rules of conduct as defined by the housing authorities. FORMALIZATION BY THE STATE, RE-INFORMALIZATION BY THE PEOPLE 427 the market rule of neoliberalism. This is followed by a third section in which I present the formalization of gecekondu housing in the Turkish context, with a focus on the first UTP in the Turkish capital. In the fourth and fifth sections, I consider in more detail the ethnographic research that captures informalization practices in housing estates and demonstrate how these practices are experienced by residents. In the concluding section, I discuss the outcomes of this informalization for residents, who are mainly eco­ nom ically disadvantaged rural­to­urban migrants.6 By placing the discussion within the framework of neoliberalism, I aim to contribute to an understanding of the formaliza­ tion of informal housing in the global South. The formalization of informal housing in the global South: neoliberal urban practices and the governmentality of the urban poor The literature on squatter settlements in the national developmentalist era (1950 to 1980) illustrates the informal place making of rural­to­urban migrants on the urban periphery through practices of building shanties situated mostly on public land. On the one hand, these building activities were commended as reflecting the right of the urban poor to shelter. This, it was believed, would eventually lead to their integration into urban society. On the other hand, the shanties were condemned for being a violation of the private property regime and for disrupting the vision of modern planned cities (Balaban, 2011; Varley, 2013). Supranational institutions, such as the World Bank and the UN, in their concern for the housing problems of the ‘developing world’, supported poor people in building their dwellings themselves, prompting
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