Risks of Urban Regeneration Projects In İstanbul Over The Documentary Value (original) (raw)
Related papers
Urban regeneration projects in Istanbul and documentary value
az.itu.edu.tr
Historic cities directly reflect urban transformations and the restructuring of social life shaping the physical environment of a city. In Istanbul, however, recent changes in the physical environment have taken a different path from that of the past. The legal framework and organization of this forced transformation has rapidly developed. Such transformation projects will set into motion irreversible processes altering historic areas in Istanbul. On the one hand, new spaces for divergent formations are sought, utilizing the power of law. On the other hand, the stratification of the city, which dates back centuries, has been subjected to regeneration projects including conservation work. However, the preservation approach employed in these projects displays an inclination towards "gentrification" at the higher scale, which bears the risk of neglecting the authentic qualities of the actual urban fabric or the buildings. In other words, the underlying aim of such projects is the removal of the dilapidated, ruinous, poor and marginal character of the present via processes of gentrification. The documentary value of a structure consists of the qualities of a cultural asset which require preservation. In this regard, this paper will demonstrate the documentary values which are threatened by proposed urban transformation projects in the historic peninsula of Istanbul.
Urban regeneration projects in Turkey are the most important urban issues discussed and have social, economic and environmental aspects. In the last 10 years, many legislative regulations have been created by the national government in order to achieve urban regeneration. Today, urban space is produced by urban regeneration projects in Istanbul as it is in many other cities in Turkey. Urban regeneration practices are prepared not only for the former brownfield areas of the city but also for the historical urban environment. This raises heritage conservation issues for urban regeneration. The Fener and Balat district is one of the heritage sites located in the historical peninsula of Istanbul. This historical district has important features such as cultural enrichment, maintaining the urban identity and unique urban patterns. The EU-supported 'District Fener Balat Rehabilitation Program' was developed for the district after the 1996 Habitat II Conference in Istanbul. Urban regeneration projects have also been prepared for this historic district since 2006. In this paper, the urban regeneration projects for Fener Balat district will be analyzed, and the results will be discussed based on the technical expertise reports of administrative court proceedings and related to some results of the graduate theses supervised by the authors in the last 10 years. The spatial continuity of the Fener Balat regeneration project is discussed along with weak governance, disconnection with the socioeconomic context and the lack of modern conservation principles for the protection of historical urban patterns. The study argues that the project risks spatial fragmentation, degeneration, disidentification, alienation and gentrification.
19th ICOMOS General Assembly and Scientific Symposium 2017 | Heritage and Democracy, 2017
In recent years, cultural heritage in Turkey has been subject to various forms of renewal interventions. These interventions are realized through a law (Act No. 5366, Renewal Law) specifically developed for the renewal of registered heritage places. The aim of the law is defined as valorizing and preserving timeworn heritage places, through ‘renewal projects’. While the aim of the Renewal Law is described as preservation, many projects based on this law propose mixed-use developments by expropriating heritage places, displacing local residents and changing their tangible and intangible features. Tarlabaşı in İstanbul, a heritage place at the core of İstanbul, is one of the concrete examples of this renewal approach. Tarlabaşı was inhabited by different social groups which are generally considered as “problematic” such as urban poor, immigrants and sex workers. In order to achieve the renewal objectives of the local authority (decision maker in the public sphere) and investors (decision maker in the market sphere), many of the buildings were expropriated and destroyed while people living in the area were displaced. Consequently, the rent value of Tarlabaşı has dramatically increased, while socio-cultural values are almost totally lost. The “Renewal Law” has been applied in a completely different manner in Konak, a central heritage place with residential, commercial, administrative and religious buildings in İzmir. The social structure of the area is also diverse consisting mostly of immigrants from eastern cities of Turkey and Syria. In the renewal project, a bottom-up approach has been adopted and holistic/inclusive strategies have been developed considering both residents’ needs and the values of heritage place. The aim of the paper is to discuss two opposite renewal approaches using the same legal tool by referring to these two renewal projects. The paper compares these approaches and critically assesses the effects of renewal projects on the preservation of the tangible and intangible values of heritage places. Key words: urban renewal, inclusiveness vs. exclusiveness, participation, sustainability
Historic Urban Fabric and Its Conservation Problematic in Turkey
Historic urban fabric is the total representation of urban architecture that has the capacity of creating the urban space and urban life of a particular society. It has guidance on providing the coherence between architectural values and cultural continuity of built environment. The man designs his built environment according to some functional and cultural bases. Therefore, urban architecture is a system or structure consisted of physical, social and cultural entities. In this system, understanding historic urban fabric initially necessitates understanding the essence of the entity. The urban components may alter with changing conditions of the modern world, but the essence of historic urban fabric lies in the relatedness between the architectural elements. In modern world, with rapid urbanization, uncontrolled changes and growth of the cities have become threat to the authentic character and historic urban fabric of the cities. Moreover, with technological developments, functions of the urban environment have changed; thereafter, conservation of the historic urban fabric and its adaptation to new form of living and land uses have become significant issues for urban design and planning policies. The main objective of this paper is to assert the necessity of understanding historic urban fabric in order to provide the perpetuation of the authentic character and architectural qualities. Defining historic urban fabric for a settlement necessitates understanding and reading the space because these practices release the inventory feature of the local character in terms of conservation practices. The study puts forth the conservation problematic of historic urban fabric in Turkey in line with explaining the development process of Turkish planning system. In the last century, many Turkish towns have been disrupted with modernization tools and projects. With capitalist materialism, many global images and architectural features are stamped to the cities as contemporary projects. Sometimes, on behalf of maintaining just the physical historic urban fabric, some architectural elements are copied as a model to the new designs such that they were lack of their soul, meaning and historic significance. In this way, many cities in Turkey transformed due to the pressure of capitalist production and the historic urban fabric could not be preserved. In some Turkish cities, the strong relationship between culture and character has been broken; in the meantime the common language that constitute the urban fabric has been forgotten. This study reveals that urban artifacts of history or historic architectural values are not the end products of a settlement; they are the result of a long-term formation including physical, social, cultural, economical interactions. Inherited environment has the capacity of creating the image of the city; thus, the built environment should be evaluated with its own entirety and continuum. Key words: historic urban fabric; conservation; urban architecture; authentic character
Colliding Urban Transformation Process: The Case of Historical Peninsula, Istanbul
International Journal of Architectural Research: ArchNet-IJAR
Over the last three decades, the disruptive quality of urban and social restructuring processes in Turkey has been intensified by the government’s decision to embrace the concept of urban transformation as a tool to boost the Turkish economy and development. In this respect, many cities have experienced a rapid urban transformation, practicing more of a top to down approach in implementing an urban planning and design, and at the same time undervaluing the potential of a participatory process for a common future and for the improvement of the quality of social and urban life. The article examines the process of “social and spatial restructuring” for the old-city housings of the city of Istanbul, as part of a larger urban transformation phenomenon. The research comparatively analyses three different urban transformation projects from the city of Istanbul's historically valued Golden Horn area and focuses on missions, actors and roles of the projects in terms of the social and spa...
A Recipe for Conflict in the Historic Environment of Istanbul
ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 2020
This paper aims to examine the processes of gentrification from a somewhat different point of view. It focuses on ‘renovation’ and ‘regeneration projects’, as well as the gentrification concept with regard to urban policies that have particularly enriched the holders of capital in the historic neighbourhoods of Istanbul. Gentrification, happening alongside with renovation and regeneration, reveals significant problems in the social structure of the city such as displacement, social polarization, social inequality and damage to the historical environment. This paper contributes to the expansion of the understanding of gentrification concept with a case study that is outside the scope of ‘usual suspects’, while theorizing the role of the Turkish state during urban transformation processes through the everyday struggles and conflicts that unfold on the ground.
A Recipe for Conflict in the Historic Environment of Istanbul The Case of Tarlabasi
ACME Journal, 2020
This paper aims to examine the processes of gentrification from a somewhat different point of view. It focuses on 'renovation' and 'regeneration projects', as well as the gentrification concept with regard to urban policies that have particularly enriched the holders of capital in the historic neighbourhoods of Istanbul. Gentrification, happening alongside with renovation and regeneration, reveals significant problems in the social structure of the city such as displacement, social polarization, social inequality and damage to the historical environment. This paper contributes to the expansion of the understanding of gentrification concept with a case study that is outside the scope of 'usual suspects', while theorizing the role of the Turkish state during urban transformation processes through the everyday struggles and conflicts that unfold on the ground.