“Unfortunately, this is very aggressive and very wrong,” he said during a recent interview. “To keep the social structure safe, you need to involve the people. Contractors get to build some modern thing — could be a shopping mall, could be a high-rise — but they have no regard for the people living there.” He added: “I call this kind of operation they’re doing, ‘killing them while kissing them.”’

Today, the area is home to a host of low-income laborers scraping by on the monthly minimum wage of 886.50 lire, or $493, or less, working jobs as unlicensed garbage collectors or serving as house cleaners for the better-off.

Remziye Civak, 34, who keeps house for the owner of a publishing company, has lived in Tarlabasi for 18 years. Her immaculate two-room apartment also shelters her husband and their three children. “We are lucky,” she said. “We own our home, but many people are renting.” A place the size of her home rents for about 400 lire a month.

The sense of community is strong in Tarlabasi, Mrs. Civak said, and she would miss that if she had to move to a new housing complex in the suburbs.

“My neighbors and I, we are like a big family,” she said. “If anyone is sick, I know I can call on my neighbor to come help. We are very close.”

But she is nervous about the intensifying drug problems where she lives. “What really worries me is the drug use. It’s called pills. I don’t exactly what they are, but there is a lot of it going on,” she said, “I worry about my kids, because they are young and I think, ‘What if they get involved?”’

Yasar Adanali, an urban scholar, consultant and activist, said that, sadly, residents were not a priority for project planners.