Participation to urban renewal projects of local governments: A case study of İstanbul/Tarlabaşı from the views of women

Social, political and economic problems resulted from squatter housing are one of the main study areas of different disciplines in Turkish urbanization literature. In addition, there seems to be more projects in recent years carried out by some local governments in order to deal with urbanization problems. Urban renewal projects are one of those which are seen as solution to these problems.This thesis argues that there are two important issues which are not considered. Firstly, it is argued that a renewal project which does not take the social issues into consideration fails to realize a real change in urban areas. Secondly, it is of importance to make people?s participation in the planning and application process. Because the success of these projects will depend on people?s knowledge about and participation in them since they will be the most affected group by renewal projects. Women actually are the main group affected by these projects because their lives are mainly limited by their houses and neighborhoods. Therefore, this thesis argues that local governments have to take women?s ideas into consideration while planning and applying these projects.The main objective of this research is to investigate if local governments have administration policies which take gender and participation issues into consideration. This investigation will be realized by researching women?s views about the Tarlabaşı Renewal Project and their ideas on its affects over their lives. Additionally, this thesis aims at discussing whether physical renewal is an adequate process in dealing with problems which are created by unplanned urbanization and squatter housing.