Migrating house

In Turkish,Gecekondus means "landed at night".It is a specific housing and settlement typology of self-service urbanization. It is a kind of life style,and a result of the rural migration in Istanbul during 1945 to 1985. It is said for the local government Gecekondus used to be an endless nightmare, they come to city like a disaster ,occupying the natural mountains, integrate into the old city patterns, but finally turned into the official urbanism of the city.It is quite weird,when this informal settlements become an important memory of the city history.As a way of survival, Gecekondus was dream of migrants.

Some points i got from research of Gecekondus today:
- ramshackle exterior, but "comfortable"interior
- a identification of "urban citizen"which means from rural to metropolis.
- illegal expanding in an informal but organic way.
- some are settled on the hill where can have a nice view of the whole city
- have the memory of 70% citizen in the city
- were replaced by modern style high-rise residential recently
- 10% of house in center Istanbul today are Gecekondus.
- were accepted by society during the time," compare with the new apartment, at least they have a garden"
- family-feeling neighborhood relationship ,have own lifestyle,for the day-labor workers and women stay in house.
- though integrate into urban,but still exist as a border-land


I don't know if it is really a good way to get rid of all the informal settlements and choose the normal residential as alternation. But there must be an another way to give the city better identification.