Do Location Choices of Residents Matter? Comparative Analysis of Two Gated Communities in Bursa

Abstract

While gated communities became a dominant urban development and redevelopment model in Turkish cities, few studies focused on their location choices in a socio-spatial context. Within the broader scale of the socio-spatial transformation of Bursa, this study investigated the internal dynamics of living in a gated community by analyzing two gated communities with the same construction standards, but different locations and development histories. One was on the outskirts and the other in the core of the city of Bursa. And the findings were interpreted within the broader scale of the socio-spatial transformation of Bursa. The main finding of the study is that, even if the construction company, construction material quality and plans of the houses are the same, the residents' profiles differ and therefore their interactions with the urban environment differ. In this regard, the findings of the macro-level analysis and the explanatory quantitative micro-level analysis both provided hints about the importance of further research into not only the type and standards of gated communities but also their location and development history. © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Ö. Burcu Özdemir Sarı, Esma Aksoy Khurami and Nil Uzun.