The Pursuit of Social Sustainability in Çiftlikköy

In the last decades, Çiftlikköy village in the northwest of Mersin city centrehasbeen under the threat of losing its rural lifestyle and natural landscape. Especially after the establishment of auniversity on a neighbouring valley, a dense residential area constructed and rural qualities of the village has been transformed into a different character. High-rise urban apartment blocks and low-density rural housing side-by-side marks social-physical contradictions and urban segregation in this selected case. In the paper, sustainability issues will be discussed in accordance to the well-being of inhabitants, inequality of rights between wide-ranging economic groups, existing and new users, settlement conditions and transformation from the rural to the urban community.