ARE BRANDED GATED COMMUNITIES SUSTAINABLE? ISTANBUL AS A CASE STUDY

Istanbul is a fairly unique city whose structure has survived many centuries. At present, the city is undergoing extensive change due to the burst of the economic bubble at the start of the 21st century, which led to an exponential increase in immigration of people with middle and upper incomes. These demographics spurred the interest of public and private investors, who initiated numerous development projects in the city, often involving the construction of gated communities. Such communities, with their artificial concepts or grouped apartment blocks, have thus become a major issue in urban planning. Current housing policy allows many different types of large-scale projects that are not integrated into the urban fabric of Istanbul. More importantly, companies are starting to invest in projects with the aim of creating new behavioral patterns and an identity for each community. Venice-Istanbul is just one example of branding of a gated community: its architectural footprint is taken exactly from Venice. The project claims to offer a living experience similar to that of Venice; however, the problem is that the identity of the community becomes a brand and is thus transformed into a marketing strategy. Such a branding strategy dilutes the social and physical sustainability of the city, which is based on the recollection of the previous image of the city with its citizens and its rich history. Gated communities enclose a physical and social structure, thereby forming an identity that is independent of the rest of the city. This paper aims to explore the identity of such gated communities by considering their sustainability in the case of the Atakent neighborhood of Istanbul. We thus address the question of whether branded gated communities are sustainable.