User Participation in Social Housing Practices in Turkey

Turkey, which is a country with rapid population growth, has a housing problem with low-income groups, that particularly emerged due to urbanization. Different solutions have been used in an attempt to solve this problem, within the scope of social housing policies that the local or central governments have produced. However, social housing policies have been insufficient to solve the rapidly changing housing problem due to the social, political, and economic dynamics of Turkey. Some social housing policies have succeeded; however, some have accelerated the formation of illegal settlements. Although the most important component of this multidimensional process is generally the government, actors, such as users, architects, and construction companies, whose expectations and effects are different from each other are the components of the process. It is uncommon for the user to have a say in the design, or production, or both of a house. This is true for Turkey and many countries worldwide. This paper aims to achieve a centralized view of the production of housing for low-income groups in Turkey, which is quite complicated and problematic; and to draw attention to the potential of user participation that has not previously had a place in this process and to open the issue to discussion. First, a literature review will be conducted that focuses on discourses in the late 1960s and early 1970s, where user participation in low-cost housing production was on the agenda. Later, to revise the existing large framework in the context of Turkey, social housing policies that were developed by the governments to solve the housing demands of low-income groups will be briefly reviewed. Finally, the effect of user participation in the process of social housing for low-income groups in Turkey will be discussed through the best practices believed to be from three practical experiments. The aim is to raise awareness about user participation in low-cost housing production in Turkey which is not currently on the agenda.