Demographic change and urban transformation: the challenges of residents' attitudes

Abstract

ities around different regions of the world have been subject to important social and cultural alterations due to ever increasing affects of globalization process. The cities in Turkey are no exception to this urban transformation with different physical and social structures emerging as a result of the economical, political, socio-cultural and technological developments. Especially during the last thirty years, the increased linkage of the country to the global world has been even felt in smaller cities in the form of new local developmental opportunities in different sectors including industry, international trade, tourism and real estate. Ever since the 1950s, one of the major components of urban transformation in Turkey has been the migration of masses that changed the socio-cultural and economic structure of the cities and eventually led to rapid transformation of the existing physical environment and created new spatial formations. As such, the topic of the urban transformation of cities while protecting both its physical as well as socio-cultural values, which is also intricately linked to sustainable regeneration and architectural identity issues, has been a hot topic of recent architectural discourse. The ongoing demographic change due to relocation process from rural to urban areas and from smaller to bigger cities, as well as due to industrialization and increasing concentration of people in urban areas, have accelerated socio-cultural and spatial differentiation and diversity, while bringing about some continuity and development trends in urban housing environments. This situation concerning housing environments show a dramatic transition procedure from past to future, from tradition to contemporary while at the same time living through changes in the residents’ perception of home and urban environments with different perceptions for people from different backgrounds. In this context, the city of Istanbul is a good example to observe and evaluate the physical reflections of a mutual interaction between the architectural identity of the city and its social structure and dynamism. Cultural synthesis is more in evidence here than in most other Turkish cities. However, the concepts of social, cultural, spatial diversity and complexity especially in housing environments differ in smaller scale Anatolian cities such as Balikesir where the city center, which always included major housing stock of the city as well, has kept its location and prominence as the only center while the city boundaries has been constantly growing and expanding. In recent years, the city started to change with an ever increasing rate causing the city to have a multi-centered organization while the historic city center is becoming more deteriorated with each day. The housing stock in the center has become a derelict area causing it to be the home for the people migrated from small villages around with low socio-economic status, which is a major threat for the restoration and renovation and later on protection of the cultural heritage of the city.