On the edge of urban transformation: Experience with home, neighborhood, city in Limontepe

This thesis analyzes the relationships, developed by the first and second generation residents living in the two squatter settlements of Limontepe district of İzmir, which has been in danger of being demolished since its establishment and was officially declared an urban transformation zone in 2012, with their homes, neighborhoods, neighbors, and other urban spaces, through discussions of social class and gender. It examines how the urban poor, living in the transformation geography created by the urbanization process, have established their relationship with the space during the transformation process, as well as its development over time and how it was narrated. It aims to clarify the tensions, reconciliation, and dissociation situations of being a squatter and living in a squatter settlement, which is a kind of urbanity form. This thesis establishes the connection between the macro process and the micro practices of immigrants who emigrated from various rural regions of Turkey in the 1970s and founded a district in İzmir and attempts do this by uncovering the history of the periphery through the life stories of people. It tries to make the practices, which are developed to maintain permanence and continuity in the space of transformation, temporality, and poverty, visible through the space experience. It critically assesses the similarities and differences between generations, genders, and neighborhoods with different topographical structures, in terms of the relation of belonging and ownership, as well as production and usage practices of spaces. While evaluating the dynamics of squatter settlement spaces, ethnography auto-ethnography and the life stories of local people were utilized. The possibilities of transforming everyday knowledge into academic knowledge were brought forward for discussion.