1 Housing Environment in The Process Of Cultural Change and Transformation; Study in Istanbul/Armutlu Squatter Settlement

While the population increase is 2 % in Turkey, it has reached 4.5 % in Istanbul. The main reason for migration is unemployment and Istanbul is subject to migration from all over Turkey. Consequently, people with low income, who move to the city from rural areas, find ramshackle traditional areas and illegal squatter settlements as their potential settlement areas. While Istanbul is a city shared in terms of space, it is far from a city shared in terms of culture. The immigrants coming from the same area choose a special area in order to live side by side strengthening the bonds among themselves. The psycho-social insecureness caused by urban life is coped with in a sense of by developing these bonds. However there are cases that these bonds are exploited and seen as a source of power in carrying illegal processes. Furthermore, those are squatter settlements that act like shield against other settlements. These settlements don’t let anyone of another culture to take refuge among them. So in these settlements an inward oriented life style persists. In the city, the problems about the planned and the unplanned settlements can only be solved by interactive solutions. The core of the problem is that, while the squatter settlements do not constitute a problem at the time they are formed because of their far-off location, later they get unfair increase in their value as an outcome of their central locations in the enlarging city. The problem has transformed from unhealthy one-store