**3. Effects of immigrant housing on urban development process in Turkey**

Socio-economic developments and industrialization as well as political choices made during and after World War II effected settlement strategies and housing production models in Turkey. As a result of serious internal migration from rural to urban areas which started with industrialization, the urbanization phenomenon in all its aspects has become one of the basic problems of the country. Illegal housing and squatter developments increased rapidly around large cities and the dwelling shortage doubled every year (Tapan, 1996), (Erkut,2000).

The basic institution facilitating the negative impact of migration is "gecekondu". The term "gecekondu" literally means "built in one night", and has become the Turkish equivalent of

most are unplanned, with low quality housing, high unemployment, and insufficient social services. In some areas, these spontaneous residential settlements represent from one-third to one-half of the total population of the metropolitan area (Bourne, 1981), (Hartshorn, 1992).Today, all of these characteristics are assumed as indicators of unsustainability. Jenks (2000) discusses the suggestions which are made to overcome the unsustainability of peripheral development through the tax system in the formal sector, and inclusive processes in the informal sectors. However, it is an approved fact that these kinds of precautions in terms of material arrangements are not enough to achieve sustainable development of any

The main idea to emphasize is that the urban housing pattern is fracturing the city into distinct areas which are the basis for identifiable communities of shared attitudes, adopted as the basic actors of sustainable urban development. As Short (1996) points out, the identification of these communities and their creation and restructuring is a very important topic for housing all over the world. This shows that, it is an important necessity to examine urban housing process both in spatial and socio-cultural dimensions. In the last decades, researchers studying on the concepts of sustainability and sustainable development agree on emphasizing this necessity and have consensus on two distinct requirements of sustainable development; physical and socio-cultural. Physical requirements of sustainable development can be classified under the headings of "high quality of life", "optimum density", "minimum energy and resource use". On the other hand, socio-cultural requirements can be classified under "changes in world views", "development ethics", "awareness and responsibility of environment and sustainability" and "participation in the sustainability studies" as the leading keywords (Çahantimur,2007). In this study different patterns of immigrant housing in Bursa are analysed in terms of physical requirements of sustainable urban development. The subcomponents of these requiements were identified by the author as follows: physical environment conditions, vitality/diversity, accessibility, flexibility, safety and efficiency of the environment as the subcomponents of "high quality of life", density of people, density of buildings and density of functions as the subcomponents of "optimum density", use of recycled materials and systems, minimum use of motor vehicle as the subcomponents of "minimum energy and resource use" (Çahantimur, 2007). First of all, urban development process in Turkey, explaining the effects of internal and external

migrations will be summarized in the following section.

**3. Effects of immigrant housing on urban development process in Turkey** 

Socio-economic developments and industrialization as well as political choices made during and after World War II effected settlement strategies and housing production models in Turkey. As a result of serious internal migration from rural to urban areas which started with industrialization, the urbanization phenomenon in all its aspects has become one of the basic problems of the country. Illegal housing and squatter developments increased rapidly around large cities and the dwelling shortage doubled every year (Tapan, 1996),

The basic institution facilitating the negative impact of migration is "gecekondu". The term "gecekondu" literally means "built in one night", and has become the Turkish equivalent of

urban area.

(Erkut,2000).

squatter (Erkut, 2000). As Şenyapl (1996) indicates, the gecekondu phenomenon has a past of half a century in Turkish cities, similar to what happened in many large cities of Third World countries. They are self – help built housing units on public land and there is no differentiation between the owner, the user and the builder of these houses. Starting with 1970s, builder and owner of gecekondu differed from each other, which led to the commercialization and decrease in environmental quality. After 1980s, market value dominated in Turkey and an informal market started with its own rules and operating system, which does not allow the ordinary migrant to build a gecekondu anymore. Erkut (2000) summarizes this process as follows; the "use value" of houses was the dominant characteristic of the first generation gecekondu. Throughout time, the commercialization of the gecekondu process resulted in the construction of informal settlements that created illegally subdivided lands which are either rented or sold. The "market value" is the dominant characteristics of second generation of gecekondu. The development process of gecekondu areas after 1980s is explained by Şenyapl (1999) in a very clear way. He points out that the peripheral areas of cities in which formerly only the gecekondu population was interested started to become popular with higher income groups who tried to get away from the disturbing conditions of cities and they began to be used for building collective housing units, mid-income group cooperative houses and private houses. The gecekondu areas close to city centers and transportation networks gained more value and were taken over by large companies to build multi-storey apartment blocks. On the other hand the agricultural lands were sub-divided into plots to be sold and small illegal apartment blocks were built over these plots. In the existing gecekondu areas for which reconstruction plans could be obtained, the owners whose lands were large enough and close to the main roads and centers were having small apartments built by contractors, while others were setting up similar two- or three-storey apartments themselves by using their own family resources, with no regard to environmental standards and reconstruction rules, just as they had done when building gecekondus. The remaining lands awaited the opportunity of being converted into apartments, and the owners of gecekondus who could manage to move into small flats, started to rent them out. Thus, this new development model did, for the first time, lead to the replacement of the organized and neat gecekondu districts by areas where widespread "moving" and "deterioration" became predominant (Şenyapl, 1998).

In developing countries, social housing (mass housing) areas are alternatives to squatter settlements. The social (mass) housing concept defines the housing production which has arisen as a result of projects aiming at producing a large number of dwellings by public or private associations for the low- and middle-income groups, in other words, for those who cannot acquire a dwelling through their own savings. They can be grouped into two; as the first group, providing multi-storey apartment blocks for rent or ownership produced by public associations, and as the second group, providing land with infrastructure or land together with a partially built dwelling supplied by the state or local governments for low income groups, with the aim of turning a self-help housing production into a planned procedure (Tapan,1996).

Tapan (1996) claims that the mass housing applications in Turkey have brought along a new urbanization model with a planned physical development. The mass housing projects usually produced outside the existing urban area are not affected by the urban fabric. They

The Impact of Different Urban Housing Patterns on the

urban housing in Bursa.

entrance of the city (fig.2).

Municipality Archieves)

Sustainable Urban Development of a Historic City, Bursa/Turkey 187

The facts that Bursa is located very near to Istanbul, which is an important world city, and that the trade roads have been organized accordingly have been an important factor in the historical evolution process of this city. Automotive and textile ranking first, Bursa is an important industrial city as well as an important international trade center. This situation caused an increased demand for the fertile agricultural fields in Bursa. In the light of these, it is thought that it will be necessary to summarize the processes of urban development and

Tekeli (1999) thinks that in order to understand the urban transformations experienced by this city and the influences thereof, first of all, the geographical location of the city should be studied. Bursa is located in the south of a fertile plain field, in the north terrace of the Great Mountain's [Mount Uludağ] skirt. Besides this natural structure, another important determinant character of the geographical location is the close distance between Bursa and İstanbul- the city which has conserved its world city properties for centuries. These conditions explain the formation of a pre-industrial city and its transformation to a larger trade center. Bursa became important thanks to silk production in 555 A.D. and has been taken by the Ottomans in 1326. The city has a castle of 800 m lenght in the east-west axis and 500 m width in the north-south axis, an inner castle comprising the palaces of the city governors and an "under castle" part in front of the eastern door which constitutes the main

Fig. 2. Bursa Castle and its near environment in 1921 Map (Bursa Metropolitan

by now. He briefly explains these changes as follows:

Tekeli (1999) has observed that the city has experienced three important structural changes

are applications that shift the urban population to the periphery of cities and have common administrative and maintenance organizations. Unfortunately, most of these settlements don't have enough relations with the city center, but there is another fact that efforts for developing infrastructure in this respect have gained impetuous.
