Gentrification emerged as a middle-class interest in renovating houses in old city cores. The process changed in parallel with the economic and political restructuring during the last decade. In this period, urban regeneration became an urban strategy used by the local governments as well as a mask for gentrification. It aimed at restructuring the urban land in line with the preferences of wealthier groups rather than the social needs of existing residents. The governments intend to remove poor images of cities through the displacement of poor inhabitants. This, in turn, increases the risk of dilapidating the authenticity of the existing social, cultural, and historic fabric of the regeneration areas. Against this trend, international conservation agencies promote rehabilitation projects to benefit existing communities of historic neighborhoods. In line with the international declarations, they intend to rehabilitate socio-economic conditions of long term inhabitants along with the conservation of historic heritage. Accordingly, the unique architecture of Fener and Balat neighborhoods has been the focus of international efforts during the last decade. Besides, the neighborhoods attracted the local governments&rsquo / interest and were declared as urban regeneration area in 2006. In this regard, thesis intends to compare Rehabilitation of Fener Balat Districts Program (RFBDP) based on the partnership of Fatih Municipality and EU and Fener Balat Neighborhoods Regeneration Project (FBNRP) based on a model of Fatih Municipality and private sector partnership, with a focus on conserving existing communities and preventing displacement.

A conservation approach developed without considering the conflicts and inequalities of political, economic and social fields can not achieve that purpose of conservation of historical and cultural values as well as engendering conflicts within relations of property relations-conservation field, social justice-conservation field and tensions between relations of property owners in areas planned to be conserved &ndash / and- state. Justified as a preference of transferring from private to public ownership of the areas those should be conserved and as a tool for solution of problems arising from restrictions on property rights of property owners, the &lsquo / barter&rsquo / system, on the one hand is becoming dysfunctional because of the contradictions between legal regulations and implementation practices, is used as a tool for production rents in reaction to the vulnerability to economic and political speculative pressures / on the other hand as being a sensitive system to inequalities in society, it deepens the disadvantageous state of property owners and produces tensions between conservation field-property owners-and-state / accordingly the justified purpose can not be realized. These findings constituting the focus of the study, verifies the necessity to reproduce the policies at &lsquo / barter&rsquo / system, justified as a conservation tool and a tool to solve the inequality problems produced while performing the conservation aim, and policies of conservation field as well.

Sheltering has been one of the basic rights of human beings during the history of civilization. As it is stated in the Article 25 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, dated 1948, housing right is one of the basic human rights. Therefore, housing is always taken as one of the core issues for the life of individuals and states undertake this matter on behalf of its citizens. However, a full supply of proper housing to meet the housing need of particularly low income groups is still an unresolved issue in many countries. Therefore, states take different actions for the solution of the issue. In Turkey, TOKI has become the single authority in meeting the housing need of lower income households. Within this context, this thesis focuses on the adequate supply of housing in meeting housing need in provinces and searched for the housing provision of TOKI as a governmental agency and a significant housing provider. In order to show this, a case study was conducted on provinces in Turkey by comparing the total number of dwelling units and dwelling units provided by TOKI with newly formed households / in addition by calculating the number of dwelling units per 1000 households per year. The case study covered the populations and annual housing starts in the municipalities of 81 provinces. The hypothesis of the thesis that expects to find mismatch between housebuilding by TOKI, which produces housing on publicly owned land, and housing need is not fully confirmed in this study. It appears that TOKI has intensified producing housing in many eastern and south-eastern provinces where the number of authorized housing built has been less than the need.

Throughout the history, there had been continuous relationships between cities and their ports. These relations recently have been changing. In many port cities, while heavy industrial functions and freight harbors have been moved out of the former harbor districts, the resulting derelict spaces have been transformed to new waterfront quarters to accommodate commercial, tourism, financial, cultural, residential and public uses with high-quality public spaces by large-scale regeneration schemes through the leadership of public-private partnership to produce new identities for these cities, and ultimately to find new niches or to maintain their places within the global network of port-cities. This thesis, aiming to examine the city-port relation on the case of Izmir, specifically focuses on the recent transformation process of Izmir Harbor District. Based on cultural perspective put forth by Meyer, it first investigates the changing cultural definitions of both the city and the port in three major European cities (London, Barcelona and Rotterdam), as well as the prominent actors which were influential in the planning and design processes of these port transformations. The investigation of three cases with reference to their individual planning contexts and the actors involved in the planning and design processes shows that the possibility of implementation of design approaches is related with the planning culture specific to the context which the practice takes place. Based on this assumption, the investigation of the transformation process of Izmir Harbor District is carried out through Meyer&rsquo / s cultural context with reference to three major topics: development of planning practice, the planning structure and transformation process. The involvement of several actors in the planning and design process and their impacts on both the process and space are particularly examined. The investigation shows that the initial planning process in the district had been conducted with a particular emphasis on urban design issues. The urban design approach in the initial sta ges of the planning process could not be implemented due to a series of reasons resulting from the Turkish planning system. Finally, this research, comparing the case of Izmir with similar recent European examples, underlines the challenges, difficulties, and problems of the transformation process of Izmir Harbor District, and discusses the missing aspects in the Turkish planning system and culture with the help of the gained insights on Izmir.

This thesis problematizes to relationship between gender based poverty and exclusion and urban space. Five forms of oppression, namely exploitation, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, violence, marginalization, faced by women in highly patriarchal urban setting are examined to identify the spatial dynamics of each forms of oppression. A field research was carried out in one of the poor neighborhood of Ankara / nearby Siteler where male dominated furniture production is carried out. Through the in-depth interviews, women&rsquo / s perception and experience of spatializedoppression is documented and used to develop the arguments put forward in the theoretical section.

In 2000 more than one fifth of Istanbul&rsquo / s population lived in a different place than their place of residence five years ago. If we consider that the 2000 population of Istanbul was around some 9.2 million, this figure means that nearly 2 million people were not living in 2000 where they used to live in 1995. Of these two million mobiles, more than half (11.5% of total) were intra-urban movers who moved from one district to another in Istanbul in the same period. Changing the place of residence can be seen as one of the major sources of changing in the socio-spatial composition of a city. In the case of Istanbul, intra-urban mobility or Residential Mobility is the major process that redistributes people in the city since the 1990s. In simplistic words, Residential Mobility is one of the fundamental decision making process which in turn is influenced by macro processes of economic, social and demographic changes in urban setting of a city which are also the determinants of urbanization, and the urban setting of a city is an outcome of mobility decisions of households at the aggregate level. In this regard, this study on residential mobility behaviours of households in Istanbul presents an avenue to further our understanding of the urbanization experience of Istanbul. In the broader context, this study focusses on the period between 1980 and 2000. It is well-known that the post-1980 period shows quite different urbanization setting from the former ones in terms of demographic, economic, political and socio-spatial settings in the world, as well as in Turkey. Within this backdrop, changing characteristics of population as that of economic structure provides unique backdrop to explore how residential mobility changes in metropolitan areas. Moreover, this study is an attempt to reach clear understanding of residential mobility which is one of the poorly understood and studied dynamics of Turkish urbanization.

In Turkey, although there are many similar implemented or ongoing conservation interventions, some of historic city centers are in better condition than other ones in terms of urban conservation. Conservation discourse describes the conservation of historic city centers as a shared and sustaining responsibility of various actors. At that point, locality is essential because of near and directs relations with historic environment. However, there are basic problems to develop a synergy based on shared responsibilities of local actors in historic centers. Therefore, the study focuses on the question of &ldquo / What is the role of local conservation capacity in the maintenance of historic city centers as a governance process&rdquo / . The study essentially discusses two issues, local conservation capacity, which is determined as an amalgam term of capabilities of local authority and local community, and urban maintenance, which is used in widening context to determines not only rehabilitation projects, but also interventions of local community let to survive of historic buildings. The method of the study is established as a comparative structure bases on case study researches. Comparisons are made between varying levels of local conservation capacity to determine their relations with success in urban maintenance. As a result, in defined context, the historic city centers of Gaziantep and Sanliurfa are studied as case study areas to evaluate success in urban maintenance as a function of local governance in terms of local conservation capacity.

Urban Development Projects (UDPs) have become hegemonic projects of redefining urban political priorities. The political construction of UDPs could not only be investigated through analyzing capital accumulation processes. To reveal how UDPs are politically constructed, this thesis investigates how governmental and non-governmental agents form a hegemonic block to mobilize hegemonic discursive practices and coercive-legislative mechanisms in the formation of UDPs. A Lefebvrian-inspired neo-Gramscian theoretical perspective is formulated to overcome eco nomic determinist and voluntarist agent-oriented approaches. Critical realist methodology is adopted with combining deductive and inductive strategies and qualitative and quantitative methods. In the first stage of research, the thesis critically and comparatively reviews the politics of different UDPs from different countries and then deduces initial arguments from this review. In the second stage, these arguments are reconsidered in the light of the empirical evidence of the case study. New City Center and Inciralti Tourism Center Development Projects from Izmir are investigated in the case study through critical discourse analysis, questionnaires and in-depth interviews. The case study reveals how governmental and non-governmental agents collaborate to mobilize public support and consent for UDPs. The concept of &ldquo / capacity to produce consent&rdquo / is proposed to theorize hegemonically constructed discourses, activities and relations of governmental and non-governmental a gents. However this hegemonically constructed capacity is no t the only base of political power. Legislative interventions operate as coercive mechanisms and play key roles in the implementation of UDPs. UDPs are politically constructed by the complementary relation and differential articulation of hegemonically constructed capacities and coercive-legislative mechanisms.

This study aims at elaborating the Integrated Lake Basin Management Planning (ILBM) approach, which is considered as a sustainable management model for lake basins, and evaluating the applicability of this approach in Turkey. ILBM considers both biophysical features and managerial requirements of lake basin systems. It pays attention to inherent dynamics between humans and nature. ILBM has been developed on the basis of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), which seeks the wise use of water / i.e. using water resources with reference to the conservation principles and thresholds. The study elaborates the ILBM planning and focuses on a case study, namely the Beysehir Lake Basin. Beysehir Lake is the third largest lake and biggest freshwater lake of Turkey. Its basin is important with the distinctive natural features it accommodates in two national parks, a special bird site, a special plant site and a natural protected site. However, improper use of the Lake&rsquo / s resources has threatened its natural and ecological qualities, despite the simultaneous conservation efforts. This study, having analyzed the past planning efforts on the Basin with regard to the ILBM principles and criteria, points to the insufficiencies in institutional structure and participation. Meanwhile, the study --depending on the findings of a questionnaire conducted with the stakeholders of the Basin-- also underlines that most of the stakeholders are unaware of the changes that the Lake faced, and they do not know about the existing plans of the Basin. This proves the need for stronger interinstitutional relationships and cooperation so as to take coherent actions. This is important for the management and planning in lake basins, but particularly in the ones which lie on more than one settlement&rsquo / s administrative boundaries like the Beysehir Lake. For the efficient and effective implementation of the ILBM in Turkey&rsquo / s lake basins, the related legislation should be revised accordingly.

This thesis explores the role played by Welsh-language newspapers in y Wladfa (the Welsh settlement in Argentine Patagonia) from its inception in 1865 until 1933. The newspapers are analysed to assess in which manner they contributed to creating and maintaining a particular kind of Welsh identity whose preservation was the founding principle of the Patagonian settlement, and how that particular sense of Welshness evolved through time. The various publications produced by the Welsh in Patagonia will also be used to identify whether there were any challenges from within the Welsh community to the values, culture and identity that the newspapers promoted. Of special interest is analysing the interaction of the Welsh settlers with the Argentine Central Government and its representatives in the Chubut Territory. The reactions of Welsh-Patagonian newspapers to the complexities of the socio-political and cultural changes that Argentina underwent towards the end of the nineteenth century until the 1930s will be identified in order to understand how the Welsh experience in Patagonia fits in with the designs of the Government to effectively incorporate the Patagonian region into the fold of the Republic, and how the nationalistic policies of the Argentine Government impacted on the Welsh community and its press. This thesis also looks at how the Welsh-Patagonian newspapers interacted with an international network of Welsh-language publications from a distant corner of Patagonia. This research thesis intends to be a contribution to the studies of the ethnic press, studies of the experiences of the Welsh overseas, and studies in the field of immigration and ethnic communities in Argentina –more specifically in the context of the Patagonian region.