Neo-liberal urbanism and sustainability in Turkey: commodification of nature in gated community marketing

Abstract

Neoliberalism arose as a project to reinforce the power of capitalism against the working class in the post-1970 period and created unequal geographies as well as unearned income-oriented urban development practices in which the capital-owning class is operative. As in many other countries, urbanization and the construction sector have been used as important powers in Turkey in absorbing the plus value created by capitalism. After 1980, with the influence of the perspective towards the construction sector and the housing policies of Turkey, luxurious gated communities’ production started in metropoles. In an environment of increasing competition, these housing projects started to present nature as a commodity by referring to projects’ concepts such as natural life, sustainable environment, eco-friendly, etc. however, in contrast, the living environments they create. This paper aims to evaluate the physical and urban sustainability performances of luxurious gated communities that emphasize natural life and present nature as a commodity by emphasizing natural life and sustainable living environments in Konya by using an indicator-based approach. Even though these new living environments claim to create a sustainable and natural living environment and be eco-friendly projects, it can be seen after the evaluation results that they cannot go further than presenting nature as a commodity. In fact, in this capitalist system, while the construction sector destroys nature, it aims to increase the sales rates of the projects by making use of people's longing for nature.