Abstract:

Gated communities produced under the influence of capitalism in global cities change and transform urban space by offering privileged, prestigious, comfortable, and idealized lives. There is a fragmented spatial relationship among this type of communities and the city, which are differentiated from the 'others'. The fragmented texture that emerges in cities in line with the boundaries determined by the walls of gated communities makes it possible to interpret such housing areas as "urban fragments". In this direction, the aim of the study is to decipher the segregation and fragmentation created by the gated communities, which are produced as an object of desire in the postmodern consumer society, in the urban fabric, through the concept of urban fragment. The expansion processes of the gated communities in the city and the spatial changes in the urban environment where they are clustered are discussed in particular for the city of Kayseri, which is an important commercial identity representative of the Anatolian geography. The goal of the study is to produce the urban distribution diagrams of the gated communities in Kayseri, to determine the site selection criteria, to analyze the relationship they have established with the context they are in, and to interpret the rupture created by such housing in the urban space within the concept of fragment. The method of the study includes the analysis of the relationship between gated communities and the urban environment in the sample of Kayseri, with maps and photographs, and evaluation within the framework of the concept of urban fragment. The spatial segregation and fragmented texture experienced in the city have been documented through the production of focused maps and urban scatter diagrams using the urban mapping technique. Thus, a reading focusing on the distribution of gated communities in the city, their density and their effects on the urban pattern has been developed. As a result, it has been determined that the gated communities produced in Kayseri were produced in new development areas where the references to the urban context are weak in the city periphery or by urban renewal in the city center and its immediate surroundings. The new housing areas produced in the hands of the capital based on the rent economy cause a discontinuity in the holistic development of the city. The urban pattern that emerged with the concentration of gated communities in the city exhibits a fragmented texture. It is read on maps that these texture clusters, which develop independently of the existing morphological structure of the city, cause disjunction in spatial continuity. The transformation created by the walls and the limited part in the city causes the destruction of the public space and spatial separations determined by the walls, borders and prohibitions.

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