A Big Plan for Small Homes: The Effort to Set Housing Standards in Turkey

Abstract

This article is about the short-lived space standards for urban housing in Turkey. Introduced in the 1960s, the standards were a crucial part of a policy that aimed to balance the housing demand and the development agenda by steering the market toward affordable housing. The Turkish state was not a significant actor in housing production. Nor had it ever before substantially intervened to regulate the housing market. The standards, however, exemplified a bold move stemming from a welfare and planning perspective. Although standards’ influence was curbed, the policy is important to address as it aimed to remedy a problem that continues today, namely, the disjunction between the housing provision and the means of the middle- and low-income groups. While a sixty-year-old policy does not provide immediate answers for today, it does offer insight into the history and context of some of the current housing issues.