Gecekondu

I've updated the city case studies in the 2nd edition of the Hodder textbooks.

I've replaced Rosario in Argentina - a city that was in a similar position to Leeds in Argentina's settlement hierarchy.

I've replaced it with Istanbul: a city that is rather larger than Leeds, and quite different in many ways, but which has a fascinating geography.

It is in an area that is prone to earthquakes, and one would imagine that there would be high level building codes, but quite a lot of housing is of the informal kind that one would expect to find in a country with a lower average income level. This sort of housing is called gecekondu, or "landed overnight" housing.

This is an excellent CityLab piece on the Gecekondu housing in Istanbul.

These small, squat, simple homes, often with roughly white-washed walls, a metal door, and a low-pitched roof, are more redolent of the hardscrabble countryside than a megalopolis of more than 15 million people. But though few of these homes, referred to as gecekondu, (“pronounced “GEDJ-Eh-Kond-U” — the first syllable rhyming with “hedge”) remain standing in this form, these humble abodes are vital to understanding how Turkey’s largest city became what it is today.

Image copyright: Josh Kramer / Bloomberg