This academic study focuses the living space of the urban poor in İzmir through the Yeşildere region. Gecekondu areas in Turkey have emerged in 1950s with the immigration of people from rural to the city who migrate for reasons such as job, education and health care to meet the housing needs of people. These areas have become against to construction law, unplanned, without infrastructure together with serious environment and health problems. Yeşildere has become a gecekondu area in order to meet the housing needs of people who migrated to İzmir between 1960-1975 due to the establishment of industrial buildings and job opportunities. In time, having stuck in the city center, some interventions and works have been started under the name of so-called "urban transformation" because of the increased value of the land and the gecekondu residents were sent to other parts of the city or mass housing in the city's peripheries. Yeşildere, besides housing the aqueducts which still remain today from the Roman and Ottoman era, is being used as a gecekondu settlement due to the accelerating industrialization in the country. In recent years, demolitions have been carried out by the local government for certain reasons and new infrastructure works have been carried out in the region. In this context, the aim of the thesis is to evaluate and criticise the historical transformations of İzmir and Yeşildere, the physical and social characteristics of the urban poor's living space, the recent interventions by local government, the urban migrations and urban transformation practices. The thesis is constructing a critical analysis on Yeşildere and aiming to support the recent literature studies through the in-depth interviews with the people in the neighbourhood. For this reason, these semi-constructed interviews were conducted during the study with the individuals who is living and already lived in Yeşildere together with the literature study.