TITLE:
Healthy Environments or High Prices? Residents’ Perspective to the Urban Regeneration Projects in Atasehir, Istanbul
AUTHORS:
Deniz Erdem Okumus, Engin E. Eyuboglu
KEYWORDS:
Urban Regeneration, Residents Perception, Satisfaction, Expectation, Atasehir, Barbaros
JOURNAL NAME:
Current Urban Studies,
Vol.5 No.4,
December
7,
2017
ABSTRACT: Regeneration movement is an irreplaceable necessity for Istanbul not only to
prevent the destructions of earthquake and improve physical quality, but also
to enhance the quality of life, reduce social vulnerability and maintain both
social and physical sustainability. In Turkey, the term of urban regeneration
has had different descriptions according to various agencies and stakeholders
since 1980s. While academicians evaluate the regeneration projects as planning
tools for having sustainable and high quality urban environments from
social, ecological and economic approaches, investors for instance justify that
they need more development rights and need to make more money to build
good condition buildings for having that kind of neighborhoods. Residents,
however, are the most important stakeholders to decide the future of the
neighborhood. This research aims to evaluate what the residents’ satisfaction
level, perceptions and expectations are about the conditions and the possible
urban regeneration movements in the neighborhood. 5 main headings are
specified as main indicators for the research and conducted by surveys and
interviews with current residents in the case of Atasehir, Barbaros Neighborhood
which is a new developing and attractive area for real estate investments
and urban regeneration projects in Istanbul. At the end of this research, it is
stated that residents are very aware of the content of urban regeneration at
practice level, and they believe in their neighborhood needs to regenerate for
several reasons. They, however, discredit the term about having environment
which is healthy and has high quality of life. They are just interested in the
economic returns of the projects, and they expect to be built high level income
housing to sell the prices out of the market.