- Understanding the logic of Gentrification in different Geographies: a comparison of five regeneration projects in Ankara, Turkey    115 kb by    Güzey, Özlem | odundar@gazi.edu.tr    Short Outline Gentrification is a component of advanced capitalism that was evident in the efforts of regeneration in global urban competition. This is most effective in the inner-city squatter housing areas in Turkey, that have been subject to regeneration. Abstract Gentrification literature is focused on two discussions. Demand-side discussions rest on the existence of a new middle-class responsible of gentrifying some inner-city neighbourhoods. Supply-side discussions on the other hand argue that the driving force behind gentrification is not the new middle class but the growing rent gap between property values and underlying land values in the inner city and this gap has been exploited by the actions of property-based capital, estate agents and developers and gentrified under valued inner city housing for profit mostly in the name of urban regeneration projects. Regeneration policies have affected the Turkish administrative and urban planning systems from the 1980s onwards, parallel to extrovert economic development and global adaptation policies. Within this perspective, local governments have discovered the great potential especially in inner-city squatter housing areas, in the way to increase the competitiveness of cities in the global context. Thus these areas have been re-evaluated with the elements of regeneration within the perspective of global economy opening up new discussions on regeneration projects bring about gentrification. However these discussions also prove the fact that gentrification brings diversities in different geographies. The hypothesis is that; bringing new phenomenological explanations appears to be reasonable for understanding the logic of gentrification within the integrative nature of diversities on space. Here five urban regeneration projects developed with the GEÇAK principle in Ankara, will be examined comparatively based on the results of a field research, first to discuss whether urban regeneration projects bring about gentrification and secondly to reach to the diversities of gentrification in different geographies. Keywords gentrification, squatter housing areas, urban regeneration Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2006: Cities between Integration and Disintegration   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper