KONUT ÇEVRESİNİN DÖNÜŞÜMÜNE BAĞIL OLARAK KİMLİK BUNALIMI: ÖRNEK KENTLER DHAKA VE HOFUF

Affiliation and bonding of community members with one another within a neighbourhood is important and a way of acquiring identity. As neighbourhoods are geographical locations in which people live side by side in a limited range of physical arrangements, the spatial proximity inevitably produces certain kinds of intrusions or annoyances among the neighbours that share the space and acquire identity. Similarly, a neighbourhood also refers to the physical setting, activities, and boundaries, where the communal life to refers the norms, values and common beliefs of a group of people. Because neighbourhood today serves many of the functions of the communal life, in many neighbourhoods, especially poor ones, reliance on neighbours may be essential despite difference in the political and socio-economic background. Altman and Wandersman (1987) pointed out that the communal life provides the communal identity and essential characteristics, such as, the presence of local institutions, official recognition, the type of housing they contain, the pattern of social interaction and organization that they exhibit, the ethnic, socio-economic, and demographic makeup of residents. Population increase in urban centers has an impact on the built environment. On the one hand, poor people of rural origin migrate to big cities in search of job and economic security; on the other, expansion of the city and new development in the periphery with modern facilities encourages the affluent to move out from traditional buildings. Recently the issue of globalization also becomes an important factor for more job opportunities, which further accelerates the physical changes of old centers to accommodate the incoming population. As a result of this phenomenon, communal life and identity are gradually diminishing (Mahmud, 2001). A number of factors can be identified for such rapid changes in traditional neighbourhoods. In many urban studies and research, urban scholars point out these factors as, the changing social structure of the family; the idea of extended family diminishing; diversity of the jobs and mobility of people keeping family members apart; maintenance of old traditional dwellings becoming difficult; emergence of developers and purchase of modern apartments with all facilities in restricted, preplanned, secured neighbourhoods; and potential of existing traditional houses for rental purposes for low-income generations. (Castells,1985; Flanagan,1990; Drakakis-Smith,1997). Rapid migration of a large number of skilled and unskilled labourers to urban centers increased the demand in housing and accommodation. To accommodate this number, many traditional dwellings are transforming day by day but without coping with any building code or prescribed rules from the authorities. As the initial settlers are moving out and housing is occupied by people from outside, the traditional lifestyle is changing in the neighbourhood and place attachment and identity might be questioned. Dhaka (1), the capital city of Bangladesh, has long been regarded as one of the fastest growing cities and at present the city accommodates nearly 10 million inhabitants and 50 percent of this population is migrants (El- Shakhs and Shoshkes, 1998). The destitute condition of migrants couples with the severe shortage in the supply of residential land, accelerating transformation of the traditional housing stock especially in the old part of Dhaka (Figure 1a). Residential buildings in the old part of Dhaka are 2-3 storied, usually around 100 years old, and under the occupation of middle class families who either occupied these buildings by force or bought them with a very nominal price from the Hindu Jamindars (2). In 1971 during the liberation war, there was another break through, a good number of Hindu families finally decided to move to India and sold their property. Thus, a major transformation took place in such areas of old Dhaka (Muntasir, 1993). For another 30 years, the middle class Muslim families (who had business around the old centre of Dhaka) were residing in such houses. In the last two decades due to a number of reasons (3) these houses have been divided and subdivided into many small residential or commercial units. Housing industry in Saudi Arabia and Hofuf in particular has experienced major changes during the last four decades. Economic growth in Saudi Arabia encouraged the government to start implementing a series of five year development plans, from 1970 onwards, in order to benefit from oil revenues (4). These plans were intended to develop economic and human resources and to enhance the social order and physical infrastructure (Al- Naim, 2001).The Transformation from the traditional to the modern way of living for the Saudies was a compromise between accepting modernity and also keeping the religious and cultural values. After the oil discovery, government declaration (5) of providing land for local people through an agreement made housing development possible in a mass scale. In addition, increase in the crude oil revenue beginning in the 1970s created a boom in national economy bringing a sharp rise in national and household income. This increase encouraged the government’s program for providing free plots and the REDF loans, have made it possible for many Saudi households in Hofuf to build new, “better quality” bigger dwellings. That is perhaps one reason why the traditional Saudi landlords have moved out from the old city centre to the new development areas and gradually transformed the old dwellings for rental units (Figure 1b). Beside serving as rental units and income generating spaces for the Saudi owners, these houses also solve the major housing scarcity for the vast number of lowincome expatriate which the government and in particular municipality could not handle. This paper claims that in the old Dhaka, traditional way of living within the neighbourhood is now changing and people are now losing the neighbourhood identity once they were proud of, since the physical built environment is transforming. In Hofuf, the fereej system which developed in the traditional society as a safe-guard for neighbourhood identity is also diminishing gradually due to the modernization both in the built environment and in social life.