A City of One's Own: Gendered, Commoning Practices of Care and Repair in Istanbul

A City of One’s Own Gendered, Commoning Practices of Care and Repair in Istanbul

Eloise Piper C A M B R I D G E D E S I G N R E S E A R C H ST U D I O - D E S I G N T H E S I S

epair

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14,990 W O R D S

This dissertation is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the MPhil examination in Architecture & Urban Design 2020-2022 All illustrations by author, unless otherwise stated.

This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except where specifically indicated in the text.

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A City of One’s Own Gendered, Commoning Practices of Care and Repair in Istanbul

Eloise Piper N E W N H A M C O L L E G E - U N I V E R S I T Y O F C A M B R I D G E - J A N U A RY 2 0 2 2

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

With thanks to my supervisor and tutors, Irit Katz, Ingrid Schröder and Julika Gittner, for their continual guidance.

Thank you to Babaanne, Uncle Kaan, and everyone I met in Istanbul, for supporting and helping me during fieldwork in the Covid pandemic.

Finally, thank you to my Mum, Izzy and Imi, for their many years of grammar checking and academic advice.

Contents 6

Introduction

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Theoretical Framework

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Research Field and Methodology

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Chapter 1 GENDERED DISPOSSESSION AND DISPLACEMENT IN BASIBÜYÜK

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Chapter 2

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Chapter 3

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Chapter 4

CARE AS COMMONS

FO R M I N G O W N E R S H I P T H RO U G H R E PA I R

C A R E & R E PA I R A S A N A LT E R N AT I V E PA R A D I G M O F DESIGN AND OWNERSHIP

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Conclusion

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List of Illustrations

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Bibliography

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Appendix

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Introduction

Introduction

Urban Transformation in Istanbul Following the Second World War, rural workers in Turkey migrated towards the cities and settled on government land (de Soto, 2001). These informal settlements, known as gecekondus (‘built overnight’ in Turkish) are self-built squatter houses and were constructed by migrants in response to Istanbul’s rapid industrialisation and resulting labour demands (Erman, 2016) (Figure 1). There is much debate in literature interrogating various policy approaches towards this type of urban informality in cities across the world. For example, Hernando de Soto’s (2001) expression on formalising the informal through land-titling as means to represent and protect their property and capital, or upgrading strategies “predicated on the notion that providing services on site is much cheaper than relocating residents of informal settlements to new housing on the periphery” (Roy, 2007, p.

150). Systematic formalisation in informal contexts is often criticised as discriminating against women through “multiple, overlapping rights being collapsed into full ownership rights for a single holder, typically a male” (Varley, 2010, p. 69). In Turkey, urban transformation is typified by demolition of gecekondus and relocation of residents, formalisation of ownership, commodification of land and mass housing developments.

This thesis examines the gendered implications of this approach to urban transformation over the last 15 years through spatial and property analysis.

Many ambiguous yet decisive laws passed in Turkey since 2002 have provided an institutional framework that greatly empowered government bodies and stimulated a rapid and brutal implementation of Urban Transformation Projects (UTPs) across Istanbul’s gecekondu settlements (Kuyucu, 2014). The mass housing administration, TOKI (Republic of Turkey Prime Ministry Housing Development Administration), was empowered to demolish gecekondus on the grounds of earthquake safety, commodify the demolished gecekondu land and displace the residents

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into new TOKI-built towers (Figure 2) (Karaman, 2014). The criteria set for areas at risk, however, were ambiguous and arbitrary, often giving no objective definitions for areas defined as obsolete, decaying or dilapidating (Kuyucu, 2014). Whilst risk from earthquake destruction is a worthy pretext for the upgrading of gecekondus in Istanbul (Karaman, 2014), much literature reveals that in fact urban transformation is a “propertyfocused urban development strategy” (Lovering and Turkmen, 2011, p.

87). Indeed, property in UTPs is premised on the TOKI-wide policy of supposedly affordable market-rate houses, only available on longmaturity mortgages with any variants on public housing or rent-control models omitted (Karaman, 2013). Since the legal status of gecekondus is predominantly de facto, the government has been able to dispossess the residents and uphold private property ideals (Kuyucu, 2014).

Figure 1. Gecekondus (Sefa Emre Ilikli, 2021)

I ntroduction

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In this context, UTPs in Turkey are defined as being implemented through a process of neoliberal urbanisation, undertaken by the AKP party (Lelandais, 2014; Sakizlioğlu, 2014). This is because significant literature reveals the process as encompassing private-property ownership ideals, embedding market forms of relations into all domains of everyday life (Lelandais, 2014; Lovering and Türkmen, 2011; Karaman, 2013) and as a re-capitalisation of the urban environment (Bartu Candan and Kolluoğlu, 2008; Sakizlioğlu, 2014). TOKI housing is therefore a prime example of “of a technocratic institution enabling the neo-liberalization of land and housing markets” (Kuyucu, 2014, p. 616).

UTPs are criticised because they cause spatial dispossession, displacement and peripheralization of the urban poor, disregard property rights and destroy neighbourhood social networks and cultural activities; all of which disproportionately affect women (Borsuk, 2021; Soytemel, 2013).

There is a significant body of gendered research based on Turkey because the binaries of Islamism and Secularism or tradition and modernity make the practices of Turkish women of interest (Mills, 2007). Gendered spatial research generally understands that women continually experience physical, economic, and social barriers in the city, often invisible to men who rarely encounter them (Kern, 2020). In Turkey, these barriers include the conditional access of women in the city dictated by the public-private

Figure 2. TOKI Towers

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dichotomy, which organises women into the home/private realm, and men into the public/political realm (McDowell and Pringle, 1992; Şahin, 2018; Tuncer, 2015). These studies reflect upon the home as a site of oppression through experiences of domestic violence and isolation from paid labour, as well as how violence and fear controls women’s presence in public space (Erman, 2001; Kern 2020; Şahin, 2018; Tuncer, 2015). Fewer studies use explicit spatial analysis to examine the intersection between gender, domestic violence, property, and urban transformation in Turkey.

Therefore, this thesis study helps fill the gap in knowledge by examining how women are affected by top-down spatial procedures, and how these effects are compounded by gender in relation to feminist theory.

Moreover, the enforcement of private property ideals and the formalisation of housing affects women. This originates from the fact that UTPs are affected by “social relations, inheritance practices, land uses, laws, and institutional structures that are deeply interconnected with gender, race, class” (Borsuk, 2021, p. 6). The homogenisation of land devalues the importance of fluid public-private space, which enables women’s social networks in gecekondu communities (Soytemel, 2013).

Through spatial analysis, this thesis looks at both the adverse gendered experiences of urban transformation and existing gendered cultures in the subject neighbourhoods, based on research on the Başıbüyük Urban Transformation Project as a primary case study.

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There is a need to explore property in relation to feminist theory because property rights significantly contribute to gender inequality. Indeed, globally only 15% of land and property owners are women, thus unequal housing access and housing ownership play a significant role in gender discrimination (Tummers and MacGregor, 2019, p. 71). Furthermore, in Turkey only 8% of immoveable property is owned by women (O’Neil and Toktaş, 2014, p. 30), which disempowers women by creating a gap in social status and economic well-being (Kocabicak, 2018). Critically, research demonstrates that women’s ownership of land can act as a preventative measure against domestic violence and that women’s exclusion from property rights increases women’s risk of poverty and violence (Agarwal and Panda, 2007; Kocabicak, 2018). Furthermore, the implications surrounding property disputes and displacement from informal gecekondus to formal TOKI towers are gendered because of the “complex entanglements between patriarchy, capital, land, and poverty” (Borsuk, 2021, p. 7).

Consideration of the intersections between environmental disaster and gendered violence is missing from the current literature on urban transformation, gender, and domestic violence. Through a series of laws, the municipality was partially able to implement the Başıbüyük UTP on grounds the area is at risk of ‘natural disaster’ (Law No. 6306 On Transformation of Areas Under Disaster Risk). Kuyucu reveals that the laws which have enabled urban transformation are no more than legitimisation devices (Kuyucu, 2014). Given that Istanbul is susceptible to experience earthquakes (Barnes, 2010), disaster-resilient gecekondus is of great importance. However, if urban transformation is about disastersafety, then gender must be an integral factor to consider because women face higher risks in disasters in comparison to men (Işık et al., 2015). For

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example, following disasters women have less access to resources such as social networks, secure housing and employment and domestic violence increases (Işık et al., 2015). Thus, this thesis uniquely positions women’s property rights as imperative from an environmental-feminist perspective.

This thesis is preceded by studies on urban transformation in Istanbul, which expound various inequalities caused by UTPs, such as top-down and non-participatory implementation, manipulation of ownership rights, displacement of the urban poor to make way for land commodification, isolation of workers from informal economies and social/spatial isolation (Bartu Candan and Kolluoğlu, 2008; Baysal, 2013; Demirli, Ultav and Demirtaş-Milz, 2015; Karaman, 2014; Kuyucu and Ünsal, 2010). These studies echo similar cases across the world. In Mumbai, 55% of residents live in informal housing, and these settlements have been targets of major redevelopment; displacing and dispossessing thousands of Muslims, North Indians and other marginalised groups (Casolo and Doshi, 2013).

Again, distant market-orientated resettlement in Mumbai negatively affected women who were isolated from their local work (Casolo and Doshi, 2013). In the Turkish context, there are fewer studies that interrogate the effects of urban transformation on women and those that do primarily focus on peripheral displacement (Borsuk 2021, Soytemel 2013). Distinctly, this research has perspective of all stages of urban transformation still within Başıbüyük’s boundaries.

Therefore, this thesis firstly asks, how do private-property ideals and displacement as a result of urban transformation in Istanbul affect women? Furthermore, in contrast to the neoliberal private-property ideals as described, the thesis asks what complex forms of property and spatial relations emerge through the practices of women? Consequently, this thesis argues for an alternative spatial and property model to the current paradigm, based on the emergent gendered property and spatial relations and questions what the role of design is in an alternative property

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model? And how can property ownership contribute to gender equality?

In order to answer the posed research questions and demonstrate the argument, this thesis begins with an explanation of the theoretical framework used to analyse informal settlements from a gendered perspective. Secondly, the Başıbüyük case study and methodology are explained. The first chapter expands upon the impacts of neoliberal urbanisation in relation to gender and through spatial analysis on the gecekondus in comparison to the TOKI estates. It further identifies the gendered practices and relations undervalued by the current model and situates this thesis within feminist, design and legal geographic literature. The second and third chapters analyse these gendered practices in relation to home and neighbourhood space as a forms of complex property relations. Finally, the fourth chapter establishes the argument for an alternative design approach to the current UTP process. The design approach is grounded in the gendered spatial and property relations identified in the preceding chapters and is supported through speculative design proposals.

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Theoretical Framework

Theoretical Framework

Gendered Experiences of Neoliberal Urbanisation and Accumulation by Dispossession UTPs in Istanbul could be seen as part of a process of neoliberal urbanisation. A crucial attribute of neoliberal urbanisation is the conditioning and enforcement of private property rights over other forms of housing rights (Rendón and Robles-Durán, 2017), through displacement of the urban poor and commodification of land to sell for profit. David Harvey (2003, p. 145) explains this practice through his theory of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ which is the “commodification and privatization of land and the forceful expulsion of peasant populations; the conversion of various forms of property rights (common, collective, state, etc.) into exclusive private property rights” and the “suppression of alternative (indigenous) forms of production and consumption”. Harvey emphases that financial capital promotes neoliberalism, and accumulation by dispossession not only deprives people of their economic or physical means of production, but also their social and cultural existence (Borsuk 2021; Harvey, 2003). It is important to recognise this process in spatial analysis because it underpins the experiences of and attitudes towards dwellers in informal settlements, and de-values their cultural, social and economic livelihoods dependent on locality.

Implications of neoliberal urbanisation and private property ideals are intertwined with social groups of difference and accentuates the experiences of dispossession (Borsuk, 2021). This is explained by Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality (1989) which reveals that struggles for women vary and intensify dependent on their race, class, sexuality and more. The theory is integral to studies on gender, land and the value of women’s labour. For example, Silvia Federici (2004) reveals the ongoing invisibility of the value of women’s reproductive labour and subsistence farming. This labour of the planet is particularly performed by

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working class, rural women in the Global South, who are then excluded from land rights (Federici, 2004). Likewise, bell hooks (1990) reveals how unpaid care labour is unequally experienced amongst women, as many black women would work for white people all day, only to return home and sustain their families too; thus reinforcing a racist, capitalist system.

Intersectional theory is critical when understanding women’s experience of domestic violence as economic instability exacerbates dangerous conditions for women and thus plays out in the context of informal settlements through masculine insecurity over socioeconomic struggles (Erman and Hatiboğlu, 2017). Accordingly, this thesis recognises that spatial dispossession is experienced differently by women in Istanbul.

This is because informal settlements often house the urban poor or marginalised communities and minority groups, which only intensifies struggles of displacement and dispossession further.

Within the Turkish context, the gendered experiences of accumulation by dispossession and displacement in UTPs are intwined with intersectionality and private-property ideals. For example, regarding the Fikirtepe UTP in Istanbul, Ebru Soytemel (2017, p. 111) argues that the top-down implementation of the project confined housing rights to individual private property, ignoring any collective rights and thus could result in “violating the existing property rights of homeowners, causing accumulation by dispossession and widening the social equalities even among the property owners”, particularly women. Disproportionate, adverse gendered implications intersect with class in UTPs because their policies ignore “the role of space or the locality to enable or to create solidarity and self-help networks” which women in deprived neighbourhoods depend upon and instead emphasise women’s dependence on their husbands (Soytemel, 2013, p. 77). Similarly, Imren Borsuk (2021) argues, through her research on the Kadifekale UTP in Izmir, discussions on property rights do not only exclude gender, but also the profit-driven implementation affect women’s access to support networks, employment,

T heoretical F ramework

affordable housing and care work. Borsuk (2021, p. 2) argues that the UTP process is exemplary of accumulation by dispossession through the commodification of potentially profitable land inhabited by the poor.

UTPs adversely affect women because firstly, legal property ownership definitions exclude women through the de-valuing of collective rights in property; manifested through women’s social activities and care networks (Soytemel, 2013). Secondly, the enforced new profit-driven structure results in women experiencing the impacts of displacement more severely because they rely on neighbourhood social networks more than men (Borsuk, 2021). This literature highlights the need for spatial research that recognises how gendered livelihoods are reliant on local space, to prevent the reproduction of existing gendered class inequalities.

The implications of displacement and dispossession within UTPs disproportionately affect women, not only through disrupting social networks, but also increasing the risk of domestic violence (Erman and Hatiboğlu, 2017; Erman and Hatiboğlu, 2018). Tahire Erman’s and Burcu Hatiboğlu’s substantial work on urban transformation documents various gendered experiences through spatial analysis on gecekondus and TOKI apartments. Erman describes the spatiality of the gecekondu as flexible between home and street, disrupting boundaries of private and public (Erman, 2019). Contrastingly, following displacement to the TOKI towers; the boundaries between homes through enforced private property disrupts women’s social and childcare networks (Erman and Hatiboğlu, 2018). This is because in the gecekondu, unlike the TOKI apartment, the street acts as an extension of one’s home, and fosters the collective oversight of children and women’s outdoor gatherings which, most importantly, were found to increase women’s solidarity in the face of domestic violence (Erman and Hatiboğlu, 2018). Crucially, Erman and Hatiboğlu (2018, p. 830) found that following displacement to TOKI apartments “the middle-class view of family privacy was accepted as the

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norm, neighbours would not intervene, leaving women to cope with their own victimization. When husbands could not or did not find jobs and women felt the need to use public spaces more often, seeking social aid, it again increased the risk of domestic violence”. It can be deduced that displacement to TOKI apartments can contribute to gender inequality and that spatial analysis advocating for women’s safety must value women’s care networks reliant on locality.

The literature reveals a knowledge gap in understanding new values of property production and rights. Critically, Nicholas Blomley (2004) asks if individuals can exercise property rights over objects of shared cultural value, which I argue for in this case throughout this thesis because women in informal settlements take a mutual responsibility over neighbourhood space. A mutual claim of land is created and disrupts the use of property as means to attain autonomy and privacy (Blomley, 2005). Indeed, Tim Jeeves (2014, p. 4) argues that “aside from the legal determination of possession, questions of responsibility and entitlement are decisive factors in claims to ownership”. However, in legal property definitions, this production of space is suppressed and converted to private property through urban transformation, as per Harvey’s accumulation by dispossession (2003).

Therefore, in order to recognise the various gendered property and spatial relations produced by women in Istanbul’s informal settlements, this thesis further draws upon women’s existing practices of care and repair as the creation of an alternative form of property.

Commoning Care Gender and care in relation to the city has been a long-standing area of investigation for many researchers and designers. Care has many understandings and interpretations which complicates how to quantify its value in relation to space and property. Care encompasses

T heoretical F ramework

emotions, activities, modes of labour and a feminist form of ethics (Trogal, 2017). For Kim Trogal (2017, p. 162), of critical importance is defining this form of ethics and establishing that care “is not a call for autonomy, that each person or place should be more independent or self-sufficient but is to question the very notion of autonomy and to recognise that care structures our world”. Therefore, care is a holistic practice and is not limited to paid labour activities, for example cleaning, health care and food provision. For feminists, care is performed with and complements unpaid reproductive labour, and thus cannot be isolated from social reproduction (Abkublut, 2017).

With regards to the recognition of gendered care labour, Social Reproduction Theory (SRT) for many feminist designers is integral to not only revealing gendered inequities within cities, but also envisioning new possibilities for urban design and relationships between, space, architecture and care (Trogal, 2017). SRT understands that human labour reproduces society, yet capitalism only acknowledges productive labour as legitimate; ignoring how family and care works sustains the worker and this labour is largely performed by women (Bhattacharya, 2017). The sustenance of the capitalist worker by those marginalised, under Social Reproduction Theory, is also intersectional. For example, David Madden (2020) argues that urbanisation today is expelling the working-class and poor communities from the cities, yet it is the labour of these communities that the city itself depends upon. Therefore, this thesis recognises the value of care in informal settlements through SRT. Trogal (2017) argues that relations of care can be structured within spatial conceptions and property ownership. Trogal (2017, p. 162) offers the commons as one such example considering they are “shared spaces or resources that are neither public nor private…a form of ownership or responsibility made through use rather than as a property relation”, this use being care practices. Trogal is demonstrating the link between care and collective property definitions through identification of ‘the commons’

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as the spatial manifestation of complex ownership relations. In this context, care activities by women can be recognised as the production of the commons. Therefore, this thesis argues that care can be valued as a more complex form of ownership in informal settlements made through practice, rather than legal definition.

Crucial to the definition of care in relation to space is understanding it within wider systemic issues. Of relevance is María Puig de la Bellacasa’s critical perspective on Joan Tronto and Bernice Fischer’s definition of care as “everything that we do to maintain, continue and repair “our world” so that we can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, ourselves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web” (Tronto, 1993, p. 103, quoted in Puig de la Bellacasa 2017, p. 3). Puig de la Bellacasa (2017, p. 4) places further emphasis on care as interweaving a web of life, as essential in feminist thought due to the “emphasis on interconnection and interdependency in spite of the aversion to “dependency” in modern industrialized societies that still give prime value to individual agency”. The valuing of individual agency is pertinent to this thesis because it resonates with the neoliberal values of autonomy over one’s property and absolute private property ideals identified earlier. These values are promoted in Istanbul’s UTPs and devalue interdependent ownership relations and collective responsibilities.

Indeed, Blomley (2005, p. 620) argues that if “individual autonomy is to be achieved by erecting a wall (or rights) between the individual and those around him. Property…is…the central symbol for this vision of autonomy, for it can both literally and figuratively provide the necessary wall”. The implication of his analysis is that property is not just symbolic of autonomy. Property can be a central symbol in representing the gendered, collective relations of women in Istanbul’s informal settlements, augmenting the value of care over individual agency.

T heoretical F ramework

Critical Practices of Repair Tronto and Fischer’s definition of care posits it as a form of repairing the world. Similarly, repair has thus taken on new meaning in recent years as a critical approach within spatial discourse. Repair can allude to human processes of maintenance, fixing, and holding together both the physical and social worlds (Millington, 2019) and is a critical process to identify and value within spatial, gendered studies on urban transformation in Istanbul. However, repair has many distinctions to care. A key figure in this debate is Gautam Bhan, who describes self-built housing as a repair process. Bhan (2019, pp. 645-646) demonstrates that many houses in Indian cities are both inhabited and built “incrementally and simultaneously: brick by brick, one layer at a time, moving forward but sometimes also falling behind” and accordingly reflects Teresa Caldeira’s (2017) state of the ‘specific temporality’ of autoconstruction. Bhan argues (2019) autoconstruction is a repair practice of incrementally building one’s house whilst still living in it and is distinct from construction. Furthermore repair, as a term, contributes to Bhan’s classification of a Southern urban practice as a theoretical framework which defines five key characteristics of repair practices (2019). Firstly, a practice of repair contends for the restoration of immediate functions as primary need. Secondly, repair is grounded in “immediate material life-world”, where access denotes the likely choice of the material for a project. Thirdly, repair does not presume actors nor is isolated to a particular discipline. Fourth, those who need repair know who and what is needed for it to be done, and finally practices of repair recognise and understand that materials can be in a constant cycle of use (Bhan, 2019, p. 646).

Nate Millington (2019) also reflects upon Bhan’s concept of repair as having resonance with Caldeira’s notion of autoconstruction as an urban process. Millington (2019) also offers a critical interpretation of repair as a care practice if we recognise that the “infrastructures that surround

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us to be interlinked in complex, intimate ways with broader dynamics of social reproduction”. There are limitations to Millington’s connection here, due to the unclarity of what these infrastructures are. However, what can be inferred is that the fixed infrastructures which ensure the possibility of life and survival, akin to social reproduction, are in breakdown. Hence, this thesis offers further that the repair of infrastructures and the built environment, is a care practice if understanding these practices to be sustaining the world.

Millington further grounds the practice of repair within analysis of an empirical urban case study, Minhocão in São Paulo, Brazil. Minhocão is a highway which is closed to traffic and transforms into a public space through spontaneous appropriation, which he argues might “be seen as forms of collective repair, efforts to create leisure in a space underserved and develop avenues for collective presence” (Millington, 2019). This case study demonstrates that repair is a spatial practice found commonly throughout everyday life and that a politics of repair engages with the everyday urban environment, whilst “opening up space for more radical potentialities going forward” (Millington, 2019). Therefore, if it can innately exist, the implication of Millington’s analysis is that repair can also be replicated and used within new architectural interventions.

As such, both Millington and Bhan structure an argument for repair to be used within critical spatial practice. Millington theorises that a critical spatial politics of repair would build upon foundations of the everyday with the hope of something more expansive (Millington, 2019). Likewise, for Bhan, repair is not only continually rooted in ongoing practices but should also be developed into a critical architectural practice so that, as an example, state “slum” upgrading programmes could draw upon the practices of autoconstructed environments and start “thinking about repair as both practice and pedagogy”, to address the disconnect of upgrading programmes (Bhan, 2019, p. 647). However, their studies do

T heoretical F ramework

not define the spatial design opportunities to realise this theory, which this study attempts to navigate towards and argue for. Accordingly, the theoretical framework is next contextualised in the empirical data on the Başıbüyük UTP, to demonstrate a critical articulation of an architectural, gendered praxis that reflects complex property relations.

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Research Field and Methodology

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In this study, the Başıbüyük UTP is analysed as a primary case study and exemplifies neoliberal urbanisation. Başıbüyük in Maltepe, was a once marginal area in Istanbul, but is now engulfed by urbanisation (Figure 3).

Başıbüyük is a five-decades-old gecekondu settlement and was targeted by urban transformation because the predominantly de facto tenure of the gecekondus places them in a weak legal position (Kuyucu, 2014).

Furthermore, under clause 73 of the 2005 municipality law, municipalities were able to define ‘transformation zones’ based on areas described as decaying, obsolescent and dilapidated (Kuyucu, 2014). Following the designation of Başıbüyük as a ‘transformation zone’, the district municipality in partnership with TOKI demolished gecekondus and built new housing in two phases (Figure 4). In phase one (completed 2009) six 15-storey towers, hosting 50 standardised apartments each, were built (Figure 5) (Saglar Onay, Garip and Garip, 2017). These TOKI towers initially housed the residents displaced from the demolished gecekondus.

These gecekondus were replaced by the second upmarket TOKI estate (completed 2021), as a part of the second phase of urban transformation in Başıbüyük. They consist of 20 three to five storey apartment blocks

Figure 5.

Phase 1 TOKI Towers

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Başıbüyük, pre- Urban Transformation

TOKI TOWERS (2009) GECEKONDUS TO BE DEMOLISHED

Phase 1 Figure 4. UTP Phases in Basıbüyük

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(Figure 6); some gecekondu residents have recently moved in and some are for sale. Some gecekondus still exist in Başıbüyük (Figure 7) but are in an area under threat of transformation (Figure 4). Consequently, in this thesis the TOKI housing is analysed in contrast to Başıbüyük’s existing gecekondus to reveal the experiences of displacement and dispossession for women. In the first stage, because the gecekondus were predominantly classed as ‘illegal’, residents were only offered the demolition value of their homes, rather than the full value, and given an opportunity to purchase a TOKI flat on a mortgage with state-subsided credit. Mostly, the price was too high and the implementation of the Başıbüyük UTP lacked any social or economic programmes and participation of residents (Kuyucu & Unsal, 2010). This not only places doubt on the government’s ‘environmental’ intentions, but also creates a “serious risk of displacement, dispossession and geographical relocation of poverty” (Kuyucu & Unsal, 2010, p. 1490).

Figure 6.

Phase 2 TOKI Apartments

R esearch F ield and M ethodology

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The study is primarily based on fieldwork conducted in Başıbüyük in August-September and November 2021. Methods during fieldwork consisted of participatory observation of Başıbüyük and four intensive group interviews with women living in the different housing typologies.

The first group interview was in two parts and took place in one of the new TOKI apartments with four women, who had all originally migrated from north-eastern Turkey. Three of the women lived in the new apartment estate and included: Elif, a forty-one-year-old single mother, studying at university; Fatma, a fifty-two-year-old, high school-educated housewife; and Pinar, a sixty-three-year-old, elementary school-educated housewife (pseudonyms have been used throughout the thesis). Pinar’s daughter Ece, a thirty-two-year-old housewife and university-graduate, was the fourth woman interviewed and lives in one of the old TOKI towers. All the women were relocated from gecekondus. The second interview took place in the outside, TOKI communal space with just Elif and Fatma present. The third interview took place with two women living

Figure 7. Gecekondus

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in a gecekondu and included Zuhal, a forty-three-year-old elementary school-educated housewife, and her daughter Feray, a twenty-threeyear-old pharmacy technician. The second interview took place in the neighbouring gecekondu with Burcu – a fifty-three-year-old elementary school-educated housewife, and her husband Mustafa, a fifty-fouryear-old municipality worker with a similar level of education. All the gecekondu dwellers are Kurdish with origins from Kars.

The interviews were conducted in Turkish with an interpreter present.

The interviews were semi-structured (see questions in appendix) to ensure the study focused on spatial and ownership themes consistently and not bring up potentially traumatic subjects for the women. Gendered studies in Turkey in relation to space often reveal the high presence of domestic violence with poorer women at greater risk (Kerman and Betrus, 2018).

Indeed, one study exposed that 62.8% women in a gecekondu settlement experienced domestic violence (Aba and Onat, 2012). Consequently, a careful ethics assessment was produced prior to the interviews because, whilst the project confronts the need for expanded female property ownership as the basis for increased levels of domestic security and equality, and assesses the inequalities caused by UTPs, this was not the focus of the interviews. This is because it is an urban space and designfocused study, using my expertise as an architectural researcher to only ask questions focusing on gendered spatial conditions of various forms of property ownership and housing typologies (see appendix). For this reason, methods during fieldwork also included a walk round the TOKI estate, a drawing activity and extensive photography to produce visual data conducive to the aims of this study. Furthermore, design speculation is a key method to position this study in explicit architectural discourse, which not only has the capacity to resist the current UTP model, but also as acts as innovation, in the sense of proposing new forms of design that can directly increase gender equality.

R esearch F ield and M ethodology

As a part of the methodology, this thesis analyses Başıbüyük as a primary case study to provide an in-depth and situated perspective of urban transformation for women living in housing typologies that are unique to Istanbul. It is by no means exhaustive nor aims to be reflective of women or urban informality as a whole, as women’s experiences are complex and intersect with various axes of religion, class, etc. The experiences of urban transformation for women in Istanbul also vary, thus during the fieldwork period I met with experts on urban transformation, the Tarlabaşı Community Centre, and Mor Çatı Women’s Shelter to gain a comprehensive understanding on informality and gender in Turkey.

Hence, this fieldwork, the interviews, and participatory observation in Başıbüyük, combined with critical perspectives on literature aims to demonstrate one specific axis in the varying experience of women in Istanbul. It further aims to contribute to a broader understanding of the complexity of gendered struggles in other informal contexts.

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Chapter One

Thus far, displacement and dispossession in relation to property ownership and neoliberal urbanism has been discussed generally and in relation to gender, care and repair. The thesis now situates the explored literature and spatial analysis within the Başıbüyük UTP case study. Today, Başıbüyük is a stark juxtaposition of gecekondus, TOKI apartment blocks and TOKI towers (Figures 8-9). Hence, the subsequent analysis compares the two typologies to explicate the realities of urban transformation for women more acutely; and is based on my participatory observations and interviews with women living in these housing typologies.

Property Ownership in Basıbüyük’s Gecekondus and TOKI Estates In Turkey, UTPs represent the government’s neoliberal ideals of reenforcing absolute private property and singular ownership over life (Karaman, 2013). The private-enforced space of the TOKI apartment is sustained through the de jure ownership of single-owner mortgages and title-deeds. In contrast, de facto definitions of ownership and lack of title-deeds in Başıbüyük gecekondus distort formal definitions of ownership, and thus are unrecognised by neoliberal ideals. The government’s intolerance towards gecekondu property rights is not isolated to that of legal condition. Absolute private property ideals also ignore alternative and more complex ownership claims present in the gecekondu through the activities of women. For example, through my observations of Başıbüyük, I perceived boundaries between what is public and private to be blurred. Different spaces host multiple activities; front doorsteps become meeting spots, neighbours visit daily and there is a strong interrelationship between the street and women’s domestic and social activities (Figure 10). These activities distort a definitive boundary between private and public ownership because they contradict notions of what is traditionally performed privately in the home or overtly in public.

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Of relevance is Joseph Singer’s ownership model (2000), which is the dominant property model in capitalist societies and promotes absolute, single-owner, private property, and in part a spatial model (Blomley, 2004). In this model, the owner is dominant and private property rights are seen as firmly finite and exceeding collective rights.

Blomley (2004, p. 27). elucidates that this model weakens other claims to land because it “relies upon a geography of property, predicated on finite boundaries and absolute spaces”. The ownership model in part explains how the diverse spatiality of ownership in Başıbüyük’s gecekondus are not valued. The collective and pluralistic rights created through women blurring public-private space are not legitimised in comparison to the rights of the private owner (Blomley, 2004).

In Başıbüyük, the spatiality of the gecekondu is deeply connected to social relations and the sharing of care-work. Spatially, these relations manifest on the streets, gardens or front doors (Sarıoğlu 2013), and are aided through the gecekondu’s interdependent relationship with the street. Consequently, the loss of social relations through UTP displacement deeply affects women more than men because socialisation becomes a solution to the rarity and unaffordability of formal childcare (Sarıoğlu, 2013). In Başıbüyük, the spatiality of the gecekondus facilitate domestic chores and childcare. For example, carpets and laundry are hung up to dry on balconies or fences, and women watch the children in the playground/street below from their balconies (Figures 11-13).

The low-rise but high density, sporadic formation of the gecekondus also increases horizontal and vertical connections between homes and street. Overlapping boundaries between outside and inside are created through garden space spilling onto the street and slope (Figure 14). The slope the gecekondus sit upon creates neighbourhood-scale circulation space and acts as a playground for children. What is evident from my observations is that these socio-spatial interactions are most acutely

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Figures 8-9.

Juxtaposition of Gecekondus and TOKI Estates in Basıbüyük

TOKI TOWERS (2009)

GECEKONDU

TOKI APARTMENTS (2021)

TOKI APARTMENTS (2021)

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seen through the cultures, livelihoods, and activities of women and that they have a symbiotic relationship with local and self-built space.

Whilst talking on the gecekondu balcony, I asked Zuhal if she knew her neighbour and if they socialise. In response, Zuhal brought out her broom to knock on the shared wall as a means of communicating.

The offset balcony space enabled us to have a conversation with her neighbour (Figure 15). I argue that these social networks and relations define a cultural and collective ownership of space. Furthermore, previous studies demonstrate that women rely on place-based social networks (Sakizlioğlu, 2014; Yilmaz, 2005), thus demonstrate the potential adverse effects of displacement for women in Başıbüyük’s gecekondus.

In contrast to the gecekondu space, my observations of the TOKI towers (phase one) reveal a subjugation of collective spaces of social relations, reproduction and play through a loss of horizontal connections and visibility. The effects of relocation on play and social outdoor space in Figure 11.

Gecekondu Balconies Overlooking the Playground (Sefa Emre Ilikli, 2021)

the TOKI towers are of particular dissonance. For example, the tiny balconies, just one playground-structure and arbitrary, concrete and unlandscaped public space surrounding the blocks demarcate the spatiality of a typical TOKI development (Figure 16). Vertical, high-rise TOKI

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Figure 12.

Gecekondu Balconies Overlooking the Playground

Figure 13.

Gecekondu Balcony Space for Laundry

Figure 14.

Overlapping Gecekondu Garden and Street Space

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blocks supress possibilities of front doorstep chats and collective watching of children. As well as promote a ‘privatised’ home space through the closed-off individual housing units (Figure 17) (Demirli, Ultav and Demirtaş-Milz, 2015) and no interrelated outdoor space. In contrast, the gardens in Başıbüyük’s gecekondus are indispensable for daily routines and provide crucial socialisation space for women (Karaman, 2013).

Furthermore, my interviews revealed the unsuitability of the TOKI spatial layout for women’s gecekondu lifestyles which rely on neighbours and close family proximity for support and happiness.

These relations are fostered by the gecekondu’s symbiotic relationship with the street and neighbouring gecekondus. Burcu and Mustafa Figure 16. (left) Lack of Playground and Landscaped Space in TOKI blocks Figure 15. (right) Gecekondu Balcony Space for Communication with Neighbour

expressed discontent with the idea of living in TOKI towers because of the potential loss of neighbours and economic strain:

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When you go to the residences like that [pointing to the towers] you lose the neighbourhood bonds, but the neighbourhood bonds are really strong here, so it’s really important, and we don’t want to lose that by moving there. We were displaced from Kars to here, we were forced to come here, but if they change our place here again, they should make it so we don’t lose the neighbourhood bonds that we made here.

The government says you have the right to housing, for example, they say I’m going to give this place to you for this much money, but it’s too much because people are living in gecekondus can’t afford it, that is the system Sometimes TOKI is good, everyone would like their lifestyles to improve, but they shouldn’t do this by putting them in debt, so if you get this TOKI, you will be in debt for 200,000 lira but with the minimum wage being so low you can’t owe this much…Most people who live here, especially men, they are construction workers… so how are they going to pay for this?

Their narratives reveal the potential economic strain of displacement to TOKI towers on gecekondu dwellers because it is typical for the men to be working but in low-paid jobs and the women at home, thus the debt is far too high for most. The debt the participants refer to is the previously explained TOKI mortgage scheme, which is reflective of an inflexible property regime that has already increase financial responsibilities for residents in the completed TOKI towers (Kuyucu, 2014) and ignores the collective ownership of the gecekondus.

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Explanations of Differences These findings corroborate previous literature revealing the adverse implications of UTP dispossession and displacement, particularly on women. However, my interviews with the women living in the recently completed, phase two TOKI apartments reveal diverging opinions on TOKI urban transformation and experiences of living in a gecekondu, giving a new perspective to the current literature. One interviewee, Elif revealed they “used to live in a crowded setting. But now we want our kids to have their own lives. We’re still together at heart but now everyone is living their own life”. With regards to maintaining neighbourhood bonds, Ece added “yes we feel like a family, we are still neighbours”. Fatma explained how they maintain their community: We visit each other’s homes, and we call each other and say we are going out to the park. Or in front of doors. We feel really close, we visit each other whenever they want and because we were friends before, we can visit each other very easily, but even if that wasn’t the case, we would still be friends with each other. There is a feeling of community.

Compellingly, when Elif lost her husband, she decided to stay in Başıbüyük, despite having no other family in the area, because of the support and importance of her friends and neighbours: I decided to stay here and not go, because at every event such as weddings or deaths, I have people to trust. For example, I can leave my child with anyone, because I can trust anyone.

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Figure 18.

New TOKI Green Space

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We have utility bills, but the land belongs to the state, that’s officially what we state when we go to the government agency…People who live in those kind of places [TOKI] see us living in ‘slums’ on the ‘fringes of the city’, but they see us as a different class, as inferior.

People don’t have a problem as a society, but the state divides people.

Class differences are thus accentuated by the state, revealing the intersectional experiences of those living in gecekondu settlements.

Kurdish people in other areas of Turkey were also marginalised through urban transformation. For example, in the Kadifekale UTP (KUTP), Borsuk (2021, p. 2). reveals further that “Kurdish women's experiences of displacement and resettlement…show how gendered dispossession works through the axes of difference (age, ethnicity, class, and poverty) and creates gendered deprivation and asset erosion with their exclusion from affordable housing options, dispersal of their communities, and separation from their ethnic employment niches”. The KUTP displacement caused the loss of stuffing mussels as a form of informal female employment because the change of private home space prevented women from using their homes to produce stuffed mussels and the relocation detached women from their clients (Borsuk, 2021).

Of relevance were my conversations on dispossession and geographical displacement of the urban poor with employees from the Tarlabaşı Community Centre on the Tarlabaşı UTP. I learnt how the mussel stuffing business was affected by the Covid-19 pandemic because these mussels are sold in the downtown area of Istanbul, but sales largely stopped during the lockdowns. Women also inevitably became more responsible for the childcare and teaching of their children. Therefore, it is important to recognise the intersectional experiences of economic dispossession in informal settlements to not only explain the differing outlooks on TOKI, but also as means to propose alternative property models to the current advancement in search of more equitable housing.

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Furthermore, given that Başıbüyük residents were not relocated out of their neighbourhood, women’s neighbourly relations and networks of care are sustained. Pinar explained the importance of living in Başıbüyük for her: I like this place…because of my friends and relations...I don’t like to live in crowded places. People like to live in downtown Maltepe, because people prefer the ease of transportation, but in downtown you can’t find the intimate relations.

However, in other UTPs in Istanbul, many residents were displaced from their neighbourhoods to peripheral TOKI estates. For example, the Tarlabaşı UTP displacement caused the gradual destruction of the neighbourhood’s social networks and community feeling (Sakizlioğlu, 2014) and the residents of Ayazma and Tepeüstü were displaced to TOKI Bezirganbache following urban transformation (Cabannes and Göral, 2020; Demir Hülya and Yilmaz Ahmet, 2012) (Figure 19). Whereas in Başıbüyük, proximal neighbourhood space facilitates women’s networks of care, child-labour and moral economies and maintains the relations amongst the women, who support each other in times of crisis. This analysis echoes Soytemel (2013) and Borsuk’s (2021) previous findings emphasising the role of locality. For example, in Kadifekale “neighbors were not only a source of emotional support but also practical help for domestic and reproductive responsibilities. Especially in case of urgencies such as birth, death, or illness, female mutual support was stronger in helping each other through the ties of reciprocities that enhanced a sense of security as well.”

(Borsuk, 2021, p. 9). Critically, fragmented social relations in cities can lead to higher risks for women because experiences of domestic violence tend to be less when women have someone to go to (McIlwaine, 2013).

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What is evident from the research is that although the women have contrasting views on TOKI home space and how conducive it is to their cultures and lives, the importance of being in Başıbüyük to maintain neighbourly solidarity is significant. Care and social practices are integral to this solidarity. Consequently, valuing these care practices as a form of complex property relation and as a gendered production of space, is explored further in the next chapter.

Chapter Two

Care as Emotional and Social Relations

There were multiple caring relations between all the women interviewed in Başıbüyük. Care, in the form of strong emotional investment in each other’s lives, proved to be one of the most important things for them. For example, they look after each other’s children, provide support in times of need (death, family emergencies) and care for elders. Other studies show these caring relations amongst women are essential for solidarity in the face of domestic violence (Erman and Hatiboğlu, 2018). I asked the women if their care relations changed upon their relocation to the recently completed TOKI apartments (Figure 20) from gecekondus, to elucidate the potential effects of differing home environments, Elif answered: Yes, we are now separated, but people who are my neighbours don’t have to be in the same block as me. This is a small town, and when I call, for example for a medical situation, they come help me. We still see each other, we are still friends, Fatma added: Yes, we feel like a family, we are still neighbours.

In times of crisis, all women expressed mutual solidarity amongst each other. Most poignantly, Elif shared that she trusted the other women as family: When I lost my husband, my brother suggested I go to another city.

Even though my brother wanted me to go there and even though there are no relatives here…because of my neighbours and friends, I decided to stay here…I can trust anyone.

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The women in the new TOKI apartments noted that even though they live in different blocks, the old ties they have with their neighbours do not change their bonds. Evidently resettlement into the apartments affected how the women care for each other but not how much they still do so.

Hence, it is clear that solidarity, social and caring relations for all the women in the interviews are intrinsically tied to their neighbourhood space. Comparably, Trogal (2017) describes how a commonly owned steam-powered water pump in a vineyard transitioned across multiple people’s private spaces and thus mobilised a network of people. She illustrates “actual space may be of less importance than the community and practices associated with it, which can continue to be supported through common objects or activities rather than spaces. It also suggests that private spaces, buildings and their care can still support common or mutual practices” (Trogal, 2017, p. 166). Similarly, women living in the TOKI apartments in Başıbüyük negotiated and adapted their routines and care relations around their new private space, but without their neighbours, this would not be sustained.

In both the gecekondu and TOKI apartments, there was a reliance on women for the social reproduction and caring of their families, particularly with regards to cooking. The women in the gecekondus were deeply attached to the spaces associated with cooking and eating and adapted their spaces to suit the food activity in question. I observed how their large balcony, even in winter, was used by Burcu to cook fish on a barbeque, as well as providing space to dry food and store wood for their heaters (Figures 21-22). In the summer, Burcu cooks and the family eat together on the balcony; she said that if she were moved to another place, this important activity would be lost. The women in the other gecekondu similarly spoke about using the balcony to cook, eat, make börek (pastry), and drink tea together. In all cases, food is care, labour and a source of neighbourliness, friendship, and joy. This illustrates the importance of the space as providing the foundation for the care relation, which in

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turn produces other social and gendered relations. This neighbourhood network and interdependency demonstrates how women interweave a web of life (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017) sustaining their livelihoods. Puig de la Bellacasa (2017) further argues for the transformative potential of care to reframe an aversion to dependency, to not only make visible often neglected activities, but to also envision neglected activities as productive.

Bellacasa’s critique offers an opportunity for feminist design research to identify and value the social reproduction in gecekondus as integral to the sustenance of family life, as a productive activity and thus recognised as adding property value.

Despite the difference in spatiality of the gecekondu and TOKI apartments, the spirit of the women in creating their care activities and maintaining their rituals persisted. For example, both groups expressed that having barbeques and eating on their balconies are important and positive experiences for them. The activity in question was the same, but how they perform this activity differs. The women living in the gecekondus showed me how they created a barbeque to sit on top of the balcony’s blockwork wall (Figure 23), with a pipe to direct the smoke away from the space.

However, the TOKI apartment with reinforced glass walls, does not allow for DIY devices such as these. Instead, they have a manufactured one, or take barbeques to then nearby forest. This suggests that the home space is perhaps of less importance than the neighbourhood space (Trogal, 2017) in supporting community and associated care practices. However, women in the gecekondu demonstrate how easily their private spaces can be adapted to support mutual practices that are important for them.

The Value of Care as Labour Care is not only a social and emotional relation between women, but a form of social reproductive labour in the Başıbüyük case study. The women in the TOKI apartments and gecekondus all maintain their own

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Figure 20.

TOKI Apartments Playground

Figure 21.

Gecekondu Balcony Space for Food Preparation

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Figure 22.

Gecekondu Storage and Outside Eating

Figure 23.

Gecekondu DIY BBQ

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homes and sustain their families through the cleaning and cooking. In the TOKI apartments, two participants said that their husbands help, but explained further that the men go out to work, which is why they stay at home. They also made clear they do not hire anyone to clean their houses. However, male workers maintain the communal areas of the new TOKI apartments (the repairing, the cleaning, and the landscaping). They have a cleaner, technician, garbage collector and someone to tend to the landscaping. Pertinently, the production of labour and maintenance of the TOKI public versus private space changes. The semi-public space is maintained by men who are paid for this labour, yet the clearly defined private space is maintained by the women who are unpaid for this labour.

Likewise, in the gecekondu case, women are still responsible for the unpaid care of the home. Erman and Hatiboğlu (2017, p. 1285) explain that the “neoliberal paradigm is highly gendered; in its assumption of a rational economic self and celebration of the market, it ignores social reproduction, rendering invisible women’s unpaid work in the family”.

Furthermore, the value of labour in the TOKI ideology reflects the neoliberal policy of value as synonymous with price and the “natural workings of free and independent agents” (Bollier, 2016, p. 3). Value under capitalism encourages “us to believe that only certain forms of labor (waged labor, or at best, labor that contributes to producing marketable commodities) produce value in the first place” (Graeber, 2013, p. 224). These values explain why women’s collective workings in both TOKI and gecekondu environments are ignored as adding property value under neoliberal urbanism. Bollier (2016, p. 4) poses the question that an alternative theory of value could challenge neoliberal ideals and promote nonmarket realms, such as the “care economy”.

Therefore, an alternative ownership paradigm to the neoliberal model, could be a theory that values care and social reproduction as a property right, and in turn values the invisible labour of women in Başıbüyük.

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Care as Commons Women in the gecekondus performed multiple caring activities. For example, sometimes childcare is performed in the shared play and seating space on the side of the road next to the gecekondus. At other times, the balconies overlooking the playground enable the collective watching of children and their proximity to each other make this form of care a social activity. I learnt that people from all over the neighbourhood would send their children to this location too. It can be argued these relations are a form of commoning. Trogal (2017, p. 163) expounds that there is a reciprocal relationship between care and commoning considering “there are practices of care that belong to commons, and commoning practices, such as forms of responsibility, of sharing, of reciprocity, of democratic organisation and of welfare. However, care as a practice can be said to produce commons too”. In this setting, the reciprocity and mutual responsibility amongst the women is a commoning activity, but also is the creation of the commons.

Their neighbourhood space, if defining by legal property relation, belongs to the government, but these definitions of ownership do not reveal the creation of a commons as more complex, collective form of ownership made by use (Trogal 2017). Bengi Abkublut (2017) further illustrates that: All of us have relied and continue to rely on care provided through families, friends, and other types of social networks and relations…Relations of mutuality, sharing, and reciprocity that sustain our daily lives and social interactions…all involve an element of care. In that sense carework is a commons: it is the most fundamental basis of social reproduction.

Women’s network of care in turn alleviates the care work responsibilities for other women and mitigates barriers of expensive childcare through collective watching, supported by the gecekondu spatiality. Pertinently, Leslie Kern (2020) reveals that under neoliberalism, solutions for providing

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childcare in cities are market-orientated; meaning that payment is required for these essential services through underpaid labour, instead of designing or re-imaging the built environment to recognise the importance of care work. Neoliberal policies disproportionately affect poor women and reproduce inequalities because taking primary responsibility for social reproductive labour, isolates women from paid labour. It is evident that the creation of a commons by women is also rendered invisible by neoliberal capitalism. It only recognises productive monetary labour as work, de jure title deeds and does not value the importance of social reproductive labour as sustaining the neoliberal system (Bhattacharya, 2017).

Evidently, an alternative design approach valuing this labour is needed.

The atelier d'architecture autogérée (aaa) are a collective promoting selfmanaged architecture and micro-politics who demonstrate how the commons can be valued through alternative design approaches. They argue women continually produce social relations of and contribute to the commons. Accordingly, they initiate commoning activities through their design projects, such as gardening, because the design challenges users to take active roles (Petrescu, 2013). They argue that evoking relations to and for the revival of the commons can “invent new forms of property and shared living that are more ethical and more ecological”, as well as envisioning “a wider understanding of architecture above and beyond buildings and physical space” (Petrescu, 2013, p. 317). The aaa distinguish that the commons are a spatial infrastructure; it is both the production of a community and the production of a space for the community (Petrescu, 2013).Their practice is relevant to the recognition of the commons as a form of ownership over space, through the care practices of women in gecekondus and TOKI apartments, and how to implement an alternative approach in these areas which is more ethical than the current neoliberal paradigm.

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Limitations of Care Imperative to this argument is that the women’s caring activities, emotions

and labours create the commons, demonstrating a collective ownership of land which is undervalued by neoliberalism. The privatisation of commons

spaces is intrinsically linked to the “separation of (wage) labour from other

life activities, and feminists thus show that it is in the money-economy

that housework and reproductive tasks ceased to be viewed as ‘real’ work”

(Federici, 2004; Trogal, 2017, p. 163). As such, many feminists call for

a new form of valuing women’s care and social labour (Bollier, 2016).

However, Akbulut (2017) furthers argues that recognition of care work is

simply not enough, and rather what is missing is realising how care work

can “be organized in a socio-ecologically just future…since re-centering

a society around care does not imply gender justice. Quite the contrary,

care work has historically been one of the most exploitative, flexible and

invisible forms of labor performed by women”. Indeed, both case studies in

Başıbüyük illustrate this point. For example, in the gecekondus, inadequate transport infrastructure isolates women and reduces their access to shops

for food. The women are responsible for the cooking and food provision;

thus, this disproportionately affects them. Zuhal spoke of her struggle: Zuhal: We don’t have a supermarket, so we want the minibuses to come all the way up the hill…We need everything. In winter everything becomes two-times more difficult, especially in terms of transportation, because of the snow and ice and climbing the hill it gets more difficult.

Likewise, in the TOKI apartments, Fatma also talked about the need to improve the transport system in Başıbüyük, because she also does not like driving in the centre, cannot afford taxis, and relied on her late husband for driving outside the neighbourhood. Dependency on local space, dependency on men for movement outside their neighbourhoods, and the difficulties of accessing wider areas of Istanbul were key themes across all the interviews. Insufficient infrastructure and transport in neighbourhoods contribute significantly to women’s inequitable access to resources, which could isolate women further from paid labour.

Indeed, the dictation of the private and home space as the realm of

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women maintains an ideology of women’s labour to be confined to the home (Hayden, 1980), and lack of physical access upholds this system. Of critical relevance in illustrating this analysis is the fact that in the gecekondus and TOKI apartments, generally women are housewives and those who do work outside the home also struggle.

Feray is a pharmacist technician and described her journey to work: It’s really difficult, I am working in Suadiye, I have to take two minibuses and then the Marmaray [tunnel], it’s very hard.

Elif, in the TOKI apartment, also spoke of her dreams to open a café in Suadiye but spoke of the difficulty in achieving this because of transport issues. The geographical difficulties of city work isolates women from alternative forms of paid labour and also affects how they provide important social reproductive, care labour.

Nassauer (2011) recognises the limitations of and the romanticism of care and argues that physical appearances of neatness and order, trimmed trees and colourful flowers have a halo effect. Consequently, the absence of neatness creates the assumption that spaces lack care, despite the fact these appearances are not always necessarily environmentally and socially good (Nassauer, 2011). Although, what is missing from their analysis is how the supposed absence of cared for land can be manipulated to define entire areas as without value or derelict. For example, with reference to the implementation of the Başıbüyük UTP, the ambiguous laws designated gecekondu areas as ‘obsolete’ and ‘decaying’ (Kuyucu, 2014). Their appearance does not conform to idealised ‘neatness’ and this is equated to lack of care and render invisible alternative claims of ownership. However, as demonstrated in this chapter, there are other practices by women in gecekondu neighbourhoods that create spatialities of care.Care in this setting is a form of repair of their social worlds. Therefore, the following chapter establishes repair as critical, gendered mode of producing physical space, ownership and forms the argument for new understandings of property.

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Chapter Three

Repair as Ownership

Repair practices can be identified within Istanbul’s gecekondu settlements through Teresa Caldeira’s process of peripheral urbanization (2017). The theory describes how informal neighbourhoods are not build in isolation, but transversally autoconstructed with interactions with various states and institutions. Within this process, the citizens themselves then become political agents and claim spaces as their own (Caldeira, 2017). A gecekondu neighbourhood can be understand as a part of peripheral urbanisation because, as argued by Caldeira (2017, p. 7), “peripheries are spaces that frequently unsettle official logics… those of legal geography”. Repair practices in gecekondus, through peripheral urbanisation, unsettle boundaries of legal geography through disrupting exclusive boundaries between public and private property.

For example, I observed many autoconstructed pavilions in the public spaces surrounding the gecekondus, used to host social gatherings whilst children play (Figure 24). I was also told during the interviews that these spaces are used mainly by the women in the neighbourhood. The autoconstruction of the gecekondus is tied to the women who position spaces and areas to suit their livelihoods and women depend upon the process of building the gecekondus (Sarıoğlu, 2013). Women claim these spaces as theirs and in turn produce a cultural and collective ownership of land, if one values gendered uses over official logics of legal geography.

There is also an argument for alternative forms of ownership in gecekondus to be recognised through squatting. Of significance is Nicholas Simcik Arese’s (2018) study on squatters in vacant homes in Cairo’s Haram City; a suburban, gated-community development. The squatters in this case

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“reorients relational vectors that make up property by insisting on the morality of ownership enshrined by productive use” of the space, going unused if they were not present (Simcik Arese, 2018, p. 631). Simcik Arese (2018, p. 632) further argues that the squatters are portrayed as immoral for violating Singer’s ownership model yet implicitly position “their conception of moral property by and for productive use, property of the practiced” against the model. The idea of morality defined by the singular-ownership model is one that can be applied to attitudes towards gecekondus in Başıbüyük. Corresponding to the Cairo example, ownership in the Başıbüyük context is defined by squatting. The gecekondus are self-built through squatting on land, then women further claim the immediate neighbourhood space as an opportunity for productive space. As a means of affirming women’s repair practices as a core form of producing space, Bhan (2019) reveals that ample scholarship argues for in-situ upgrading, as opposed to eviction or redevelopment, as modes of practice to be adopted. Indeed, Andrade and Canedo (2021, p. 92) opine, through squatting in Brazilian housing, that “occupations not only challenge the exclusionary capitalist model of access to housing, but they propose alternative ways of living, working, and socializing. And all of these require suitable spaces that are constructed, planned and transformed collectively for such purposes”. The implications of the literature demonstrate that recognising the legitimacy of the production of space by women’s insurgent squatting actions has a potential for transformative urban design.

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Repair Practices in Gecekondus Repair within informal settlements for Bhan (2019) is distinct from its closest reference, upgrading. Conversely, upgrading is routed in “settlement-level environmental services and infrastructure, an action taken by the state through policy”, as opposed to repair as a shift in conception representing every day and incremental autoconstruction (Bhan, 2019, p.

646). Bhan’s argument of repair has critical resonance to a gecekondu’s gradual autoconstruction as means to adapt to everyday practices and increasing family sizes. Indeed, the spatial practices associated with the building of the first gecekondu I visited distinctly alludes to Bhan’s articulation of repair. Zuhal told me her husband managed the building of their gecekondu, but I asked if she contributed too: Zuhal: Of course, with the sand and the bricks I was a worker, I helped building it too.

Author: How did you build it, one

Figure 25.

Gecekondu Concrete Floor

Figure 26.

Gecekondu Interior Floor

room at a time?

Zuhal: No altogether, while the floors were like this [pointing to the concrete floor on the balcony (Figure 25)], we started living [in the gecekondu], but then like this [pointing to the panelled floor inside (Figure 26)] we built later…People here build their houses themselves… no-one is working from them…

Fathers are the general contractors, and the workers are the mothers…

Mothers are doing everything around the house, from cooking to cleaning.

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Zuhal also informed me the materials of the gecekondu consist of brick, mortar, paint, timber columns and beams, and corrugated iron roofing (Figure 27). The overall spatial processes of the gecekondu represent Bhan’s denotation of a language of repair considering these materials are readily found and chosen for their permeability. The informal boundaries between the gecekondus are easily manipulated to adapt to their immediate and everyday life needs. For example, Zuhal described the next phase of their gecekondu: Our space isn’t very large, and our daughters need more space, normally we wouldn’t allow a dog in the house, so we are going to build another house, so they [their daughters] can take the dog there, because when we pray there is a separate room for that, because you shouldn’t pray when there are animals in the room.

Zuhal demonstrates that the autoconstruction of the gecekondu is embedded through integral dimensions of their life, such as religious beliefs or dynamic family needs. Their daughters are now older so spend more time in the home “on social media” and with their new puppy rather than in playgrounds, thus the programme of the gecekondu changes too through continual autoconstruction. Likewise, Burcu’s gecekondu has two living rooms as per traditional Turkish culture. There is one smaller one for the immediate family and for use in winter because it has the gas heater (Figure 28), and another living room to accommodate their extended family and guests (Figure 29). Furthermore, this thesis posits that Bhan’s articulation of repair ongoing in the gecekondu is upheld and promoted through the practices of women to provide space as an essential part of the care of their families. In Zuhal’s own words, women are the “workers” who do “everything”. It is apparent that the cycles of repair, re-use of materials and agency to change the space stems from the women. Therefore, for women, repair is an active process of collectivity, presence and appropriation and thus in turn a passive and unintended

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architectural process, an architecture beyond buildings (Petrescu, 2013, p.

317). Thus, new urban interventions in gecekondu neighbourhoods must be continually rooted in these ongoing repair practices (Bhan, 2019), whilst also transforming these processes into active ones.

Figure 28. Small Living Room Figure 29. Large Living Room

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Figure 27. Gecekondu Materiality

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Repair Practices in TOKI After relocation to the TOKI apartments, women still exhibited a politics of repair (Bhan, 2019) through their everyday practices to improve their neighbourhood and lives. For example, certain autoconstructed and productive gardening techniques seen in the gecekondus, were replicated in the TOKI apartments. Elif adapted her front and back garden to grow flowers, herbs and vegetables (Figures 30-31) because this activity is important for her, especially for her cooking. These practices reflect Burcu and Mustafa’s practices in the gecekondu, where they showed me their vegetables on the front porch, making use of the thick walls for planters and a pavilion to grow vines (Figure 32).

The women in the TOKI apartments also expressed their intent and wish to repair their neighbourhood. For example, Elif told me: I called the municipality about this empty place [pointing at the vacant site] because it looks bad, I want to plant trees/flowers, some landscaping, but they didn’t do anything…We need better standards, better opportunities for children. [For example] there are mobile libraries in other neighbourhoods…We as Turkish women, we are really devoted to our children…So I am really involved in society; the men they go to work, so women have to do these things for Basıbüyük Women’s agency in repairing and improving their neighbourhood was a common point of practice amongst all interviewed. However, the women in the TOKI apartments faced barriers in achieving their wishes. I asked Elif about the mobile libraries and she informed me that she wrote to the municipality to ask for them, but her request is so far unsuccessful.

Contrastingly, a neighbourhood practice of repair is widespread in the gecekondus through their autoconstructed spaces. The difference in ownership which defines the delegation of public versus private space explains the barriers the women living in TOKI apartments face. This

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is because the limitations over ownership of public space are mitigated more so by the women in the gecekondus who claim the street space as their own. Fluidity between public and private in the gecekondus allows interconnected repairing to continue. However, neoliberal ideals on the advocation of individual agency over private space (Blomley, 2005) confines repair practices to the private space in the TOKI apartments.

What could further be inferred is that homes as private spaces, which are traditionally seen as the domain of women through the public-private spatial dichotomy (Tuncer, 2015; Whitson, 2018), allows for women’s repair practices because it is ‘their realm’ which society permits them to claim. However, women’s freedom in the public realm is conditional (Kern, 2020), thus the women in TOKI apartments faced barriers when trying to improve their public, neighbourhood space.

Repair, rather than upgrading of informal settlements, could be a new urban practice as an alternative to the TOKI model, if this practice allows for women’s agency in both private and public space as to not reinforce gender norms. Shannon Matter (2018) posits to apply repair maintenance correctly as a framework or methodology, one must acknowledge reproductive and domestic labour, particularly women, as acts of preservation whilst not romanticizing the practices. Thus, what feminists seek to establish is a critical practice of repair posited to build more equitable systems and used as an intersectional framework for the designers of the world, policy makers and citizens (Matter, 2018), which the next chapter establishes through design speculation.

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Figure 30.

Adapted Front Garden in a TOKI Apartment

Figure 31.

Adapted Back Garden in a TOKI Apartment

Figure 32.

Gecekondu Planters

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Chapter Four

Social Property

Thus far, this thesis has explored the effects of neoliberal urbanism and enforcement of private property in Istanbul’s areas of urban transformation.

Women’s practices of care and repair are identified as forms of more complex property relations and important for their livelihoods. Care and repair are gendered social, spatial, and political practices, produced in gecekondu settlements, reproduced in TOKI apartments and also affected by spatial concepts (Trogal, 2017). Nonetheless, these practices are not legitimised as core productions of urban space, nor valued by governmental neoliberal urbanisation (Rendón, 2016) and affected by accumulation by dispossession. For this reason, I draw these concepts together with social property, which can be an architect-led experimentation of land tenure and design beyond private property and can be empirically seen within housing cooperatives, communes, the commons, squatting collectives and public land (Rendón and Robles-Durán, 2017). Centred on collectivity, social property has the potential to legitimise alternative ownership rights beyond the current hegemonic model. This thesis thus offers a distinct contribution to knowledge through uniquely positing an argument for an alternative design model based on social property.

Architects can propose speculative designs as a form of research for envisioning how alternative urban interventions could make more equitable living conditions for the marginalised. Relevant to the intention of this thesis is Neil Brenner’s piece introducing ‘Tactical Urbanism’ as an alternative intervention to neoliberal urbanism. Brenner (2017, p. 115) defines it as a framework that understands an array of design experiences

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in cities and thus “promotes a grassroots, participatory, “do-it-yourself ” vision of urban restructuring in which those who are most directly affected by an issue actively mobilize to address it”. Tactical Urbanism is relevant to urban transformation in Istanbul because Brenner (2017, p. 118) also outlines neoliberal urbanism aims to commodify the “urban social fabric, to coordinate a city’s collective life through market relations, and to promote the enclosure of non-commodified, self-managed urban spaces”. Hence, Tactical Urbanism works against the commodification of urban space. Brenner describes some of the proposals at the MoMA exhibition on Uneven Growth, which exhibited designs that allude to principles of Tactical Urbanism. Brenner (2017, p. 121) argues that these proposals, despite being speculative, are clearly not meant to be pure fictions - they are presented as critical tools to reflect upon today’s problems. For the MoMA projects, each one is intended to be transformed into a “generalizable alternative to the specific forms of housing commodification and accumulation by dispossession” (Brenner, 2017, p. 125) in the city, thus are relevant to the intent of this thesis because they demonstrate how design speculation can be posited as a research approach against neoliberal urbanism.

One of the propositions Brenner describes is the aaa’s speculative alternative paradigm of design to the TOKI urban intervention. The proposition retrofits the existing TOKI housing blocks and its immediate context, in order to enable innovative methods of collective self-management by the residents including “community land trusts and local credit unions, along with other forms of collectively managed infrastructure such as community farming and gardens, fisheries, workshops, green energy sources, and repair facilities” (Figure 33) (Brenner, 2017, p. 123). Hence, design is used to take a position of resistance against neoliberal spaces created by UTPs. Critical theory and analysis on urban transformation, as exemplified in this thesis, is of high importance in recognising injustice, values and gendered productions of

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space in areas of urban transformation. Yet architects, such as the aaa, can uniquely establish this theoretical framework within design and take a different position to that of urban and geographic literature.

Another proposition described by Brenner, which demonstrates elements of Tactical Urbanism, is the work of Cohabitation Strategies (CohStra) in New York. They focus on underused spaces in the city to propose social property as an “alternative framework for land ownership (community land trusts), housing provision (mutual housing associations), building management (cooperative housing trusts), and household financing (community credit unions)’ (Figure 34) (Rendón and Robles-Durán, 2017, p. 123). CohStra emerged in response to the consequences of neoliberal urbanisation which results in the continual marginalisation of underprivileged urban communities (Rendón and Robles-Durán, 2017).

The proposal is a strategy of Cooperative Housing Trust Programs in New York where a citywide bank would acquire underused spaces. These spaces would then be owned by community land trusts who would lease the land to a Mutual Housing Association, and the association would decide on the project programme. If the project was housing, a Cooperative Housing Trust consisting of residents would be formed and the association would construct the housing using a loan from the city. The residents would gradually pay this loan off and eventually own 90% of the building. The association would also ensure the affordability of the housing. CohStra thus envision an alternative property and housing paradigm that challenges a hegemonic property model, targets marginalisation and inequality and would produce just and accessible districts through the consideration of collective demands over individual (Rendón and Robles-Durán 2017).

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Similarly, feminists propose that increasing women’s legal and definitive property ownership through alternative ownership models, such as cooperatives and community land trusts, can increase gender equality (Panda, 2006). For example, studies reveal that women who own property can be less subject to domestic violence (Agarwal, Anthwal and Mahesh, 2021; Agarwal and Panda, 2007). This is because not only does it provide a tangible exit option for the women in the face of domestic violence, but also deters men from committing violence (Agarwal and Panda,2007). Hence, to establish a new paradigm to the neoliberal model in Turkey, designers can look to social property to contribute to gender equality and the deterrence of domestic violence, if the model increases women’s property ownership. Furthermore, social property can represent many intersections of gendered struggles. For example, from the environmental-feminist perspective, there is a need to improve housing design in Istanbul’s earthquake-zones because not only are barriers to women’s property ownership intensified in environmentally unstable areas (Schofield and Gubbels, 2019), women also suffer from an increase in sexual harassment and violence following disasters (Işık et al., 2015).

It must be considered that in informal contexts, social property is widely seen as a more holistic approach than the formalisation of titles. For example, in the case of disputed land in Brazil, Flávio de Souza (2001) challenges the promotion of legalisation of land tenure on the basis it accepts the concept of private property, and the conversion of the informal into formal property excludes the poorest families automatically.

There are gendered experiences of land-titling too, given programs assume property rights to the head of the household, often male, which intensifies gendered hierarchies and reinforces women’s insecurity in the household (Roy, 2005). In the context of Medellin’s informal settlements, Jota Samper (2011) proposes communal property ownership as a more effective system over land-titling because it can protect individuals against

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land expropriation. Indeed, Rendon and Robles-Durán (2017, p. 213) emphasise that for urban disciplines to be once again socially pertinent, they must be “coordinating communities, designing economic models, writing and advocating new policy, bending property laws, developing new property models, training inhabitants, defending vulnerable dwellers, and co-creating new community management systems, all of this before thinking of its physical representation as architecture”. Therefore, the consideration of social property and communal ownership as a design framework (before spatial intervention) could be an approach that protects gendered collective rights in gecekondus, rather than formalisation of the existing de facto ones which could ignore women’s relations.

Figure 33.

Istanbul: Tactics for Resilient PostUrban Development (atelier d’architecture autogérée, 2014).

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Design Speculation Without designers demonstrating alternative approaches to urban transformation, the current model will continue to reinforce social and gender inequalities. Therefore, this thesis proposes a design strategy of gecekondu and neighbourhood repairing and co-housing in the form of a housing cooperative. The proposal aims to protect and acknowledge the complex property relations in the gecekondus and increase women’s property ownership through social property. In the project, the land is owned by the cooperative, and each cooperative member has equal agency in the management of the cooperative, irrespective of their share. To protect the tenure of the gecekondu inhabitants and their vulnerability to displacement, residents are requested to join the housing cooperative which will recognise the de facto and gendered, collective claims of property ownership, as revealed previously. Reasons to join will include neighbourhood-scale and gecekondu repairing to meet earthquake

Figure 34. The Other New York.

Cooperative Housing Trusts. (Cohabitation Strategies, 2014)

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building regulations funded by the cooperative, and collective ownership of the co-housing communal spaces to encourage mutual feelings of duty and ownership over them. The state’s development, as Karaman (2013, p. 715) argues, is about integrating populaces into a “nascent mortgage origination market”. Therefore, this model constructed on social property ensures affordability in the long-term through protecting the land from private real estate speculations, as well as ensuring property rights for women.

Neighbourhood-scale repair funded by the housing cooperative could also mitigate the existing struggles of women in the neighbourhood, which the current model neglects. The speculative project is located within the proposed and completed phases of the Başıbüyük UTP (Figure 35). Given the women interviewed all expressed the importance of locality for them, repair in this design approach takes the form of new transport/infrastructure, improved earthquake resilience for all housing and new public spaces located in the many redundant spaces that I observed, which overlap with the existing housing (Figure 36). Any aspects, such as environmental-regeneration, important to the residents can also be continually upheld by the cooperative. This approach positions repair as a collective transformation over Başıbüyük, reflective of women’s collectivity in the neighbourhood already and Bhan’s (2019) contention that repair is the restoration of immediate functions as a primary need.

Collective forms of property relations and the intentional creation of the commons may better suit the livelihoods of women in Başıbüyük. To refer back to the aaa’s design proposition as alternative to TOKI, Brenner (2017, p. 135) argues the design creates a new vision of the commons,

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as a process which designers contribute to by not only “elaborating spatial proposals for the reorganization of housing functions or other dimensions of social reproduction, but by re-imagining how such basic institutions as private property…might be transformed…to serve social needs, to empower urban inhabitants”. Accordingly, as a part of the design proposition in this thesis, the speculative housing co-operative is the creation of a new commons in the form of a participant-led, self-built community workshop providing construction skills and employment for residents in Başıbüyük. In this setting repair results in the production of the commons through “repairing material items, re-establishing the functionality of shared commodities, and sharing knowledge of how to repair them” (Zapata Campos, Zapata, and Ordoñez, 2020, p. 1153).

This form of the commons is founded upon the repair practice of autoconstruction in gecekondus, where materials are denoted by access (Bhan, 2019). Evidently, spatial analysis on alternative forms of living open ups other opportunities to relate to the built space and rethink housing design (Andrade and Canedo, 2021).

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In the interviews it was revealed women’s caring relations are highly important to them, but also that their care labour contributes to gendered isolation from paid labour. Therefore, social property, as a model for architectural intervention in Istanbul’s informal settlements, could not only mitigate these struggles, but also strengthen their caring relations.

For example, if there were a shared communal kitchen, overlooking a communal playground (Figure 37), collective responsibility of childcare would mitigate individual responsibility and social relations would be encouraged through shared space. Women’s responsibility for food provision would also reduce because meals could be shared, and their isolation from paid labour could decrease. Feminists advocate for such models of social property because they have the potential to increase

Figure 35. Site Plan

PROPOSED PROJECT AREA

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Figure 36. Using the Redundant Spaces in Basıbüyük as a Strategy

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Conclusion

Conclusion

It has widely been acknowledged that UTPs in Turkey reproduce social inequalities by ignoring socio-spatial needs and reinforcing economic instabilities (Demirli, Ultav and Demirtaş-Milz, 2015). This thesis accordingly examines the gendered dimensions of UTPs through spatial analysis on gecekondus and TOKI apartments in Başıbüyük. Women in gecekondus living under the threat of accumulation by dispossession and displacement, and women in TOKI estates experiencing the realities of post-urban transformation, continue to make visible their agency over their home and neighbourhood space through relations of care and repair.

More complex forms of property ownership emerge, defying two classes of ownership ideals (Blomley, 2004). Consequently, this thesis argues for an alternative paradigm of urban intervention to the neoliberal model based on social property. This is important as women not only experience the adverse implications of urban transformation more deeply, but also, their care and repair relations are rendered invisible in value by neoliberal urbanism; relations which can be represented through social property.

This thesis reveals that ambiguous definitions of gecekondu ownership are manipulated in order to establish neoliberal singular-ownership ideals, akin to Singer’s ownership model. The difference in spatiality between the gecekondu and TOKI apartment reveals how women are disproportionately affected by UTP displacement. This is because their social networks, relations of care, and informal employment is reliant on locality and the gecekondu’s symbiotic relationship with the street and neighbourhood. These gendered relations are affected by displacement to the highly contrasting TOKI environment, which reinforces rigid divisions between public and private space. In Başıbüyük, it must also be considered that the effects of TOKI on women were not felt as intensely because they were not displaced from their neighbourhood, unlike other communities in Tarlabaşı and Ayazma (Cabannes and Göral, 2020; Sakizlioğlu, 2014).

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Thus, important relations of care and solidarity amongst the women largely persisted. Nonetheless, these finding reveal the importance of maintaining local, neighbourhood relations for all women in Başıbüyük, regardless of home environment, because studies demonstrate that networks of care provide vital solidarity for women in the face of domestic violence, and displacement to peripheral TOKI settlements can increase gendered violence (Erman and Hatiboğlu, 2017; Erman and Hatiboğlu, 2018).

Furthermore, the findings demonstrate that women’s care networks reveal the production of the commons by women made through social reproductive use rather than property relation (Trogal, 2017). However, these practices are ignored by neoliberalism which emphasise the belief that waged labour only produces value, rather than understanding that reproductive labour and care are the “most elementary form of real value-producing labor” (Graeber, 2013, p. 224). Similarly, in Başıbüyük women’s practices of repair are care practices if understanding them to be sustaining their neighbourhood space. Repair is also distinct from care in Başıbüyük’s gecekondus as a more complex property relation made through autoconstruction,albeit also unrecognised by the government as a legitimate form of production (Andrade and Canedo, 2021). Women in the TOKI apartments reproduce repair activities in their new homes, but repairing their public space is conditional through the public-private dichotomy which limits women’s agency in the public realm. Therefore, social property is offered as an alternative model because it alters a hegemonic perception on property and spaces, alike the women’s practices of care and repair.

Social property both satisfies the existing gendered cultures in Başıbüyük and proposes a model of intervention that can directly increase gender equality because women’s property ownership can deter domestic violence and increase a woman’s economic empowerment (Agarwal, Anthwal and Mahesh,2021; Agarwal and Panda,2007).Social property can also represent the more collective forms ownerships in informal settlements because it

CONCLUSION

can take on hybrid models of ownership and allow the people to produce their own livelihoods (Rendón and Robles-Durán 2017). Therefore, this thesis concludes that social property can be a more equitable form of urban intervention. Architectural design can then use social property within the design process, as precedented by the aaa and CohStra’s speculative designs as a form of Tactical Urbanism, against the neoliberal paradigm.

My own speculative proposal of a housing cooperative and co-housing scheme demonstrates how social property could be implemented in Başıbüyük and how design is a critical research tool to reflect upon urban informality problems. For example, many areas need environmental regeneration which is important for gender equality because in “informal settlements, environmental risks intersect with other manifestations of systemic exclusion – such as gender…to compound vulnerabilities and perpetuate marginalization” (Schofield and Gubbels, 2019, p. 95). Social property can recognise these risks through the proposed cooperative having a commitment to environmental problems. Furthermore, the collective nature of the model reflects the established neighbourhood networks of care and is designed to promote “equality by breaking with the patriarchal-capitalist enclosure of the domestic sphere” (Tummers and MacGregor, 2019, p. 71).

The implications of these understandings can impact both urban policy and architectural practice to consider the important practices of care and repair in informal communities, and as a form of the commons. Architects can reflect and build upon these processes in conjunction with a framework of social property to establish a radical and gender-sensitive approach to design in informal settlements. There is a real need to challenge inadequate conditions because women in gecekondu settlements and TOKI estates face multiple economic and social difficulties. For example, the lack of transport and social reproductive infrastructure reinforces women’s dependency on men and isolates women from access to the city and

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paid labour. Given the current TOKI model reproduces inequalities and devalues the collective practices of women, there is also a need to challenge the current model of urban transformation. Women’s experiences are not homogenous across Istanbul’s areas of urban transformation because of the intersections between gender, class, religion, and ethnicity. However, as evident by the spatial analysis of TOKI apartments, towers, and gecekondus, the contrasting and varying views of the women (both dissimilar and similar to previous literature on urban transformation), demonstrate that feminist spatial analysis is crucial to revealing the points of difference. Accordingly, design can reframe the accepted ideal of private property, envision new possible models that holistically encompass collective spaces over commodified land, and value gendered relations.

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L I S T O F I L LU S T R AT I O N S

Displacement.

Figure 20. Author’s Own Image. (2021) TOKI Apartments.

Figure 21. Author’s Own Image. (2021) Gecekondu Balcony Space for Food Preparation.

Figure 22. Author’s Own Image. (2021) Gecekondu Storage and Outside Eating.

Figure 23. Author’s Own Image. (2021) Gecekondu DIY BBQ. Figure 24. Author’s Own Image. (2021) Autoconstructed Pavilions.

Figure 25. Author’s Own Image. (2021) Gecekondu Concrete Floor.

Figure 26. Author’s Own Image. (2021) Gecekondu Interior Floor.

Figure 27. Author’s Own Image. (2021) Gecekondu Materiality.

Figure 28. Author’s Own Image. (2021) Small Living Room.

Figure 29. Author’s Own Image. (2021) Large Living Room.

Figure 30. Author’s Own Image. (2021) Adapted Front Garden in a TOKI Apartment.

Figure 31. Author’s Own Image. (2021) Adapted Back Garden in a TOKI Apartment.

Figure 32. Author’s Own Image. (2021) Gecekondu Planters.

Figure 33. Istanbul: atelier d’architecture autogérée. (2014) ‘Tactics for Resilient Post-Urban Development,’ in Uneven Growth: Tactical Urbanisms for Expanding Megacities [exhibition] The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 22 November 2014 – 10 May 2015.

Figure 34. Cohabitation Strategies. (2014) ‘The Other New York. Cooperative Housing Trusts’, in Uneven Growth: Tactical Urbanisms for Expanding Megacities [exhibition] The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 22 November 2014 – 10 May 2015.

Figure 35. Author’s Own Image. (2021) Site Plan.

Figure 36. Author’s Own Image. (2021) Using the Redundant Spaces in Başıbüyük as a Strategy.

Figure 37. Author’s Own Image. (2021) Communal Kitchen Overlooking the Playground.

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University of Cambridge Faculty of Architecture and History of Art Interview-based or Ethnographic Research November 2021

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A City of One’s Own: Gendered, Commoning Practices of Care and Repair in Istanbul.

Date of interviews: 21st November 2021 No. interviews: 4 Interview length: 1-2 hours Interviewer: Eloise Piper Interpreter: Sefa Emre İlikli

Structure of interview: 1) Personal Introduction: I’m Ellie, an architecture student at the University of Cambridge. I’m half-Turkish and so half my family live here, hence why I’m very interested in housing and public space in Istanbul. I’m particularly interested in how women use space in both gecekondus and TOKI apartments, and how space effects women. I’m interested in gecekondus and TOKI apartments because of how different they appear to be architecturally, so I really value your knowledge and would love to ask questions about how you live, your opinions on the neighbourhood and the places that are meaningful to you.

2) Informing participant about consent: To gain the informed consent of research participants, there will also be a verbal overview immediately prior to the interviews/ ethnographic walks, by myself, research assistant or interpreter to ensure all the details of the project have been understood, as well as a debriefing following the interview. Information about the nature of the study will be provided, explaining that participation is entirely voluntary, and that confidentiality will be respected. In cases when a signed written consent is not possible, a verbal consent will be achieved through an explanation on the project.

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7. Which spaces in your home and its surrounding area do you use the most?

8. Could you please reflect on the spaces you use the most with other women?

9. Are there any spaces in your home and its surrounding area that you share with other people frequently?

10. (If applicable) Where do your children play? Do you ever share childcare responsibilities with other people in your neighbourhood?

11. (If a gecekondu) Who built your home? May I ask who owns your home? Do you own it? How was it built?

12. Who maintains your home? For example, the cleaning, the repairing?

13. Do you feel attached to your home & neighbourhood? Why? Is it the objects you own, the area, your neighbours?

14. Is outside space important for you?

15. (Potential question dependent on participant) How do you feel about the Urban Transformation ongoing in Başıbüyük? Such as the TOKI towers or the new housing scheme? Do you think it has changed your neighbourhood in a good or bad way?

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Part 3: Imagination/ Design I’m really interested in co-living is a form of communal living with other families, and it comes in many different variations. Some only share common rooms and kitchens, whereas others also share bedrooms and bathrooms. but at its core, co-living is about living with others. I would like to get your opinion on it: 1. If you could change anything about your home, what would you do?

2. If you could change anything about your neighbourhood, what would you do?

3. If I were designing a home for you, what spaces would you want me to focus on the most? For example, the living space, the outside space?

4. Are there any spaces would you be happy to share with other people in your neighbourhood? For example, having one big kitchen? Or is having your own kitchen important? Would you be happy to share bathrooms? Outside space?

5. What spaces are most important for keeping private? (For example, your bedroom, bathroom) 6. (If applicable) If you were sharing a big kitchen with other people, how many people would you be happy to share with?

7. Finally, is there anything else you wish to say and you think is important?