400
20
3,3–148,5 200
4–66,2
10
Istanbul 1900
1950
2000
800
40
40
10.95 M L N P E O P L E . 13470 H A
1950
30
600
30
20
400
20
10
200
10
2000
1900
1950
2000
2,5–134,7
3,95–134,7
800
40
600
30
400
20
200
10
1900
40
1950
53,9
PAR
2,5–134,7
2000
800
40
25 кП 2
Administrative City Border City Center Area Territory marked on tourist city maps Urbanized Area of the City
0
2,5
5
10
The City Still Too Big to Fail? Onur Ekmekci
The expansion of Istanbul to become one of the largest metropolitan areas in the last several decades is nothing short of compelling. Throughout its 2,600 year existence, the city has always been a focal point and refuge for new settlers in search of a new life and opportunities. Interest in the city, for the most part, has continuously translated into growth in the city’s population and land, especially since 1950s, when Turkey’s urbanization accelerated to unprecedented levels. Turkey’s shift from a predominantly agricultural society to a newly industrialized nation arguably found the most potent materialization within the country’s largest city. The numbers are staggering: Istanbul’s population has reached 13 million in 2012 from 1 million in 1950. The city’s land area tripled from 1,800 km2 to 5,300 km 2 within the same period, making it the third largest metropolitan area in Europe, after London and Moscow. According to United Nations projected growth rates, Istanbul’s population should approach 18 million by 2025. However, with the continuous migration from other parts of Turkey and the lack of carefully planned measures to prevent the city’s further enlargement, the population will most likely exceed the UN’s numbers, and reach 21 million in 2023 and 49 million in 2050, which would, at that point, account for almost half of the country’s population. Such a transformation will undoubtedly have dire ramifications on the symbiotic relationship between the city and the rest of the country. In this context, Istanbul’s diffusion into its surroundings is not only a problem that needs to be resolved at the city level, as it has become a national issue as well, with the GDP of the poorest regions in Turkey equivalent to 20% that of the richest areas of the country. Thus, It is no wonder than the city continues to attract more migrants from Anatolia to this day. As a result of this imbalance, Deyan Sudjic writes in his article (aptly titled ‘The City Too Big to Fail') that internal migration in Turkey has had “the effect of making the inequalities of Istanbul grow more acute, rather than less, even as it has prospered over the last decades.” This prosperity of the city is quite visible in particular parts of the city, such as the Levent, or Etiler districts, where one can find high-rise office towers increasingly shaping the skyline of the city, along with the gigantic shopping malls and world class restaurants clustered around them, clearly symbolizing the growing economic affluence of the city and the country in general. Especially, in regards to numerous
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shopping malls, one gets the feeling—similar to Fredric Jameson’s description of Hotel Bonaventura— that they "do not wish to be a part of the city, but rather its equivalent and replacement or substitute”. This level of disintegration of the city's fabric is not limited to shopping malls or other spatial by-products of neo-liberal policies in the city center. On the other side of the coin, the city’s peripheries are “with settlements within its limits, in which Kurdish migrants from rural Anatolia tend flocks of sheep under the gaze of prefabricated concrete apartment blocks.” Since the 1980s, neo-liberal policies, along with effects of globalization, have had profound impacts on Turkish politics and the economy, which in return have had direct influences over the urban form of the country’s largest city. As result of the neo-liberal policies, Istanbul has become more of a financial center, departing from its role of an industrial city to become a service-oriented city. This has resulted in the decrease of the labor force and the decentralization of industry and factories to the peripheries. However, gecekondu neighborhoods (informal settlements), where the workforce for these industries live continue to exist in the central areas. As land values have skyrocketed in the central areas due to new demands from private real estate developers for office towers, shopping malls, or mixed-use developments, many living in the informal areas around the central areas came under the threat of losing their homes. This often meant forced eviction and the relocation of the urban poor from the central areas to the peripheries, where the newly constructed mass housing projects were located. To justify these so-called urban transformations, the official statement, by Prime Minister Erdogan, was that such informal areas were considered “cancerous districts embedded within the city” and they needed to be cleaned up. The high-rise mass housing of TOKI (Housing Development Administration of Turkey) is, in almost all the cases, located in isolated areas, devoid of decent public transportation networks, far from central areas where the jobs are, with insufficient social facilities for the mostly migrant Kurdish people, especially children and youth. “Their depressing environments and tasteless building quality” are particularly manifested through big cracks on the walls of newly built buildings, and poorly designed, inactive public spaces. One commonly sees, as in the case of Bezirganbahce Housing Project, the bathrooms dripping to lower stories, elevators not working, tiles falling down, or trouble with kitchen sinks (unresolvable problems since the families have no means to pay for the repairs, let alone their rent installments). Apartments are often too small for large families, resulting in the use of kitchen floors as bedrooms. In an ironic way, these housing projects are reminiscent of the modernist “towers in the sky,” which were used in the developed world in the last century and for some time now have been considered an unworkable typology. For a city that claims to be “global,” this is contradictory at best, to see these dated, highly problematic mass housing schemes popping up all over the city today.
For a city that claims to be “global,” this is contradictory at best, to see these dated, highly problematic mass housing schemes popping up all over the city today While the center became difficult for the lower income families to survive, is has at the same time developed into an undesirable area for high-income groups who, due to the ‘low quality of life’ caused by factors such as lack of open spaces, greenery, traffic or increasing crime rates, left the city center. Many of them moved to high-income housing areas, so called ‘gated communities’ developed in the northern parts of the city, where the natural resources and water basins are. The problem of these developments (aside from their homogenous and exclusive nature) is that, in most cases, they are not integrated into the overall metropolitan master plan. Thus, the overall picture is that the peripheries of Istanbul are today home to both ends of the housing spectrum. This dichotomy generates a profound perplexity; even locals cannot comprehend the limits of where and how the city begins and ends. In this context, what constitutes the periphery and how it is perceived is radically different, especially for the people who are forcibly confined to mass housing projects. Due to economic hardship and the resultant immobility, the kind of Istanbul these people experience can be considered extremely limited, consisting of merely tens of identical highrise blocks standing next to each other, shaped by profound poverty and isolation. Under these circumstances, dissonance between the center and periphery of the city is increasing; many fear that it will potentially generate grave economic and social conflicts and in the long term, ghettoization. According to Yves Cabannes, Chair of the Development Planning Unit at UCL and the chairperson of the UN Advisory Group on Forced Evictions, the mass housing projects in the peripheries of Istanbul will generate “serious problems and will be knocked down” in 20 years or less. There are already signs of these social problems with people unable to pay their mortgages. In some housing projects like Bezirganbahce, young children are taken out of secondary schools and put into jobs, such as those at shoe factories, to provide financial support for their families. On top of this, deeper ethnic divides (Turkish-Kurdish polarization), and the loss of highly crucial solidarity bonds and neighborly relations that used to be the main component for survival in the informal areas are becoming very serious. Such issues surrounding these mass housing projects already reveal how the city’s peripheries are developing into highly problematic enclaves. Instead of coming up with strategies that could reduce the widening gap between the center and periphery, further reckless projects are being planned out and implemented, clearly preparing the path for catastrophic results in the long run. One of these projects is a controversial bridge over the Bosporus strait. The foundation stone-laying ceremony for Istanbul’s third bridge over the Bosporus strait, named after a divisive Ottoman Emperor, Yavuz Sultan Selim, was held on
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May 29th, 2013. The new bridge (the 9th longest suspension bridge in the world), costing more than 4 billion USD, has already raised eyebrows since the plans were made public few years ago (though there have been talks about the project since the 1980s). Aside from the widely shared notion that the bridge will have little or no effect on the transportation problems of the city, what makes this project highly problematic is mainly its location, and the fear that it will expand the city’s already stretched peripheries even further along the northsouth axis. The new bridge is being built on the northern edge of the Bosporus strait, where it will pass through precious, scarce green forestry and water reservoirs. The majority of Turkish urban planners and environmentalists are in agreement that the bridge will lead to the rise of more informal developments taking place along the arteries that connect to the bridge (similar developments occurred after the second bridge over the Bosporus in later 1980s). Cutting through the non-urban, vital areas of the north many fear will, in return, produce irreversible ecological damages on the city’s water supplies. On the other hand, one cannot overestimate the political importance attached to projects like the third bridge. Historically, the idea of ‘bridging’ two parts of Istanbul, the European and Asian sides, as a project, has always been more than merely a logistical and infrastructural intervention. Rather it held profound geopolitical metaphors. An article in The Daily Telegraph (UK) once announced: “Straddling two continents, the city has been the gateway through which Eastern influences have reached Europe, as well as the West's window on the Orient, Asia and the Islamic world.” As orientalist as this may sound, Istanbul municipalities and the national government have always played on the city’s superb geographic location on two continents, using similar catchphrases to promote its unique condition of being a ‘gateway’ between two civilizations, East and West. Beyond the political metaphor attached to the notion of bridging two continents, one might argue that the third bridge, in essence, symbolizes the unsatisfying need for the central government to expand the limits of urbanized areas of the city, and consequently make more lands available for further development and profit; no matter the social, political, and ecological consequences. In order to stop inevitable chaos, the city’s problems need to be examined at the national and metropolitan regional scale, and not only within its metropolitan borders. Huseyin Kaptan, a prominent Turkish urban planner, summarizes this issue: “The planning of metropolitan Istanbul is never limited to the borders of Istanbul. Today, Istanbul single-handedly shoulders half of Turkey’s economy and exports. When you factor in Gebze, Tekirdag, and Izmit, there is a great industrial density that embraces 50% of the country. Transportation systems are also a part of this. Geographically, metropolitan Istanbul, Izmit, the Marmara Sea and Thrace are a whole. Without
recognizing and knowing this synergy, you cannot identify Istanbul and therefore you can’t plan it. Istanbul consumes all of the region’s water. So, it is impossible to define the metropolis only by its own borders.” Following Kaptan’s words, it appears crucial to evaluate every grand, infrastructural project or decision concerning Istanbul (like the third bridge) not only for the potential effect within Istanbul’s metropolitan border, but also to the a larger region. Essential in establishing a reciprocal relationship between the city and its surrounding neighbors, questions must be asked: “Is this project going to have negative ramifications over the surrounding region?” Or: “Would this project help Istanbul become more self-sustained in the long run?” Clearly, it is important also to invest in other cities around the Turkey. As long as Istanbul’s ‘share of the pie’ in Turkish economy stays the same, it will remain impossible to contain the growth of the city. There also needs to be a stronger emphasis on creating sub-centers within the city and to diminish the mono-centric nature of the city. In doing so, it is crucial not to repeat the revisionist strategies of the urban renewal projects in the central areas that undemocratically relocated the urban poor to mass housing projects in peripheries. Projects concerning valuable, prime land in central areas need to be developed in coordination with the people living there, providing them viable solutions rather than exiling them. Without a radical change in the urban policies that marginalize the urban poor, there is no doubt that the transformation and restructuring of the center-periphery relationship in Istanbul will increasingly promote a stronger sentiment of “us and them” in spatial terms. Projects like the third bridge only intensify this highly problematic situation. Lastly, perhaps the biggest concern surrounding Istanbul is the reckless way it has been managed in the last decade. Top-down decisions with the attitude of ‘government knows best’ have become the norm in developing projects for the city; increasingly garnering negative reactions. "The broader criticism is this government's, and, in fact, personally, the prime minister's rhetorical and political use of mega-projects as a PR campaign that turns engineering into political capital and silences opposition," said Sibel Bozdogan, an architectural historian. She continues: “For them, roads,
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tunnels and bridges are unquestionable instruments of progress. Any criticism or concern regarding, for example, historical heritage, environmental, or social justice, or, in this case, even safety — all of this is dismissed as subversive." In this dystopian context, the views of different parties, including urban planners, architects, environmentalists, NGOs and ordinary citizens, are completely ignored when implementing highly questionable projects like the third bridge, Canal Istanbul, or the so-called pedestrianisation project of Taksim Square. Speaking of Taksim Square, intense protests that occured in June 2013 over the preservation of Gezi Park, a small and rare green space at the core of the city, were emblematic in the way they showed the frustrations accumulated overtime and the reactions the people had towards the controversial projects concerning their city. It was also obvious: there is urgent need for a higher level of transparency and participatory structure within the urban development processes for the city in order to save the city from irreversible 'chaos' in the near future.