Genius Logi: Towards the Phenomenology of Gated Community

Abstract

Gated communities have emerged around the world for a variety of reasons including increased fear of crime, security, prestige, and a desire to be different. In Turkey, gated communities have emerged because of neoliberal policies that promotes high-income segment seeking prestige. Gated communities are constructed not only in metropolitan cities such as Ankara, Istanbul, and Izmir, but also in Anatolia. One of these cities is Aydın. Gated communities in Aydın have a unique infrastructure. They are based on the cooperative process that was widely established after 1950. this study aims to investigate whether there is a meaningful connection between the characteristics of Aydın and the gated communities. In order to determine the phenomenon of place in the city of Aydın, a hermeneutic method was used to interpret information about the location and its spirit and transferred to the table through Norberg Schulz (1976)'s work "Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture". According to the table, the phenomenon of place is divided into phenomena as image, identity and meaning. The table was designed to analyze the place identity of the city of Aydın and the phenomenon of place.