Bakırköy is one of Istanbul’s established, planned districts. The mass-housing areas of Ataköy, the dense apartment blocks of Bakırköy centre and the shoreline create quite different management needs.
Ataköy: one of Turkey’s earliest planned developments
Ataköy is among the oldest examples of collective-structure management in Turkey, and that means two things.
First, the boundaries of authority are critical. The Condominium Law sets out separately the powers of the block owners’ assembly and the site representatives’ assembly. A decision about one block’s own roof is not taken in the same assembly as one about a common area the whole estate uses. A decision taken in the wrong assembly is open to challenge, and that is usually discovered after the work is done and the money spent.
Second, the age of the buildings makes maintenance planning unavoidable. At this scale, items such as the heating infrastructure, water risers and electrical installation cannot be renewed in one go; they have to be tied to a multi-year plan. Run without a plan, every fault becomes urgent and expensive.
Salt air along the shore
In buildings near the sea, salt-laden humid air wears metalwork quickly: railings, external window frames, air-conditioning units and garage doors are directly affected. We keep corrosion control as a separate item in the maintenance calendar for these properties.
Bakırköy centre and the market area
In buildings around the market the ground floors are mostly commercial. A commercial unit generates more refuse and puts more wear on the building than a flat, yet often does not use the lift. On the division of common expenses we first establish what the management plan actually provides and conduct the argument on the documents rather than on opinion.