Gated communities and the “Middle Class” in Istanbul

Abstract

This study deals with the expansion of the once-exclusive gated community market in Istanbul to the large segments of the middle class especially following the 2008 economic crisis. It analyses how the characteristics of this housing form and its meaning for the city change with the inclusion of new segments of the middle class to the target mass. It also examines what the discourses of the residents about their gated communities, their fellow residents and the city reveal about the category of “middle class”. Firstly, the political economic dimensions of the expansion of the gated community market are discussed within the context of neoliberal urbanization. This is followed by a discourse analysis of the marketing language of the gated communities, showing what the new representations of this housing type mean for the city and its dwellers. Moreover, based on 20 in-depth interviews with the residents of the gated communities addressing larger segments of the society, along with the advertisement material, the study shows how the ideal types of neoliberal housing and the neoliberal middle class urbanite are drawn in the gated communities. It argues that the category of “middle class” is a political one with malleable boundaries (re)drawn according to the present regime of capital accumulation with these ideal types. Keywords: middle class, new middle class, gated communities, neoliberal urbanization,|Keywords: middle class, new middle class, gated communities, neoliberal urbanization, housing.