inura istanbul

Contribution to Istanbul INURA Study Visit by R.Wolff

2008-03-29T16:47:00.004+02:00

santralistanbul, inura opening meeting.

Contribution to Istanbul INURA Study Visit

Istanbul, Comment by Richard Wolff (co-director of inura)

Summing up the Study Tour and Final Comment
Presented at Final Panel at Bilgi University, March 17, 2008

Preliminary Remark

I would like to present my impressions and conclusions in the form of three statements from three perspectives, each one inspired by and dedicated to three of urban development’s main theorists.

1 The Global City Project (Saskia Sassen)
2 Social Justice and the City (David Harvey)
3 Right to the City (Henri Lefebvre)

1 The Global City Project (Saskia Sassen)

Istanbul seems to be aspiring global city status. One should not forget that in Roman and Byzantyne times it had already had this status for a very long time. Constantinople was one of the world’s first and largest global cities.

In the current age of globalization, Istanbul has (re-)entered the competition for global city status. Many of the city’s visible developments, in architecture, urban design, urban regeneration, traffic infrastructure, preservation of monuments etc. reflect these global ambitions.

One handy way of putting this development into perspective is to subject Istanbul to a ‚quick and dirty’ SWOT-analysis. So what are the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOTs)?

Strengths

- location (at a global transport crossroads)
- setting (natural beauty, hills, waterways)
- diversity (of peoples, cultures, ...)
- global openness (historic experience of tolerance)
- workforce (number and qualification)
- ...
Weaknesses

- international tensions (along Turkey’s borders and with EU)
- Turkey’s tendency for (self-) isolation
- unresolved conflicts inside Turkey
- ...
Opportunities

- commercial hub for the larger region
- potential for becoming one of the world’s most dynamic cities
- ...

Threats

- growing segregation
- social unrest (both not despite but because of investment)
- economic stagnation or decline because of unresolved political problems
- ...

International competition is prolonged / transmitted into competition between Istanbul’s districts. Beyoglu, Fatih, Eminönü etc. are rivals for prestige, image, status, and income. They compete for investment and good tax payers, both businesses and private. They all thrive for international standard and international style, and are thus anxious to ‚clean up’ their territories under the label of ‚physical and social renewal’. Whereas physical renewal can in many instances easily be understood as something unavoidable, the notion of social renewal must be questioned. The examples of Süleymanie, Sulukule, Tarlabasi neighbourhoods challenge us to ask ‚Who wins, who loses?’

2 Social Justic and the City

Is the current policy of regeneration in various neighbourhoods of Istanbul more oriented towards consensus or confrontation? Having looked at the examples mentioned above, we got the impression of a neo-liberal approach of development with increasing economic and social differences as a consequence of physical renewal. The erosion of the middle class and the total ignoring of the positive experiences with the Gecekondu style development (spontaneous, self-help, later legalized urbanization) are part of this plan.

During our tours and talks we were astonished to repeatedly hear rhetorics of war and disease when people talked about those neighbourhoods about to be gentrified. ‚Crime’, ‚drugs’, ‚prostitution’, ‚cancer growth’ were the reasons given to explain the urgency of tearing down and rebuilding entire neighbourhoods. As if to underline the seriousness of the situation the entrance to Tarlabasi is dominated by a police station with a police tank parked in front of it. All of this recalls Neil Smith’s notion of ‚Revanchist City’ where the poor are blamed for their poverty.

What is desperately lacking in this type of urban renewal are social / ethical values and a truly democratic process. Whereas it may be true that in urban development ‚you cannot always satisfy 100% of the people’ (a sentence we heard three times in two days), one should be suspicious when it is always the same 10, 20, or 30% who have to pay the price. What happens to those that again and again are being pushed around the city, those that are evicted from their homes and/or insufficiently compensated? How does the city deal with the weakest, those most vulnerable?

The democratic process should be strengthened. Participation, mediation, compensation are just a few of the demands to be put forward. In the observed regeneration processes everyone affected has to know much more of what is actually going on: information, transparency, honesty, a level playground are some of the key issues. Questions must be allowed and answered. All agents must be open to criticisms and alternative proposals. There has to be an open debate over development goals. The financial implications, e.g. a cost-benefit analysis, should be clear to everyone.

3 The Right to the City

What can we contribute to this development as an organization?
First of all, we can serve as watchdog. We can keep our open eyes on the processes that are taking place. We can report what is going on. However, we should be careful with premature judgments. We should be reluctant to present ourselves as ‚referees of last resort’. Secondly, we can provide analysis, ask critical questions, present examples of best practices and suggest alternative plans. And, thirdly, we can learn. Learn for us, learn for the network and then disseminate the knowledge gained on site.

What can we contribute from our local backgrounds?
We can offer experiences from local processes and struggles, what we learned under similar or differing conditions of e.g. global competition, CBD-expansion, gentrification, housing crises in our cities. And how we dealt with these forces and threats. We can tell about and explain forms of action and resistance we applied locally, their failures and their successes, from demonstrations to squats, from publicity work to coalition-building. Many of us have stories to tell about unwanted developments that have been blocked, and successful projects that could be realised thanks to a combination of factors and framework conditions.

We can offer best practices and point to new solutions, we can assist, counsel, advise, help lobbying, and describe alternative organizational approaches to current problems.

We can often re-assure others involved in local struggles that their experience is part of an over-arching struggle for resources, opportunities, chances. That they are not alone. That it is necessary to question and to criticize.

The struggle for the right to the city is not finished. It is something that has to
be demanded again and again. Only by this can we achieve a better and juster city.

There is no change without critique resistance and struggle.

Richard Wolff, end of March 2008

2008-03-10T01:28:00.004+02:00

TF5 The Impact of Cultural Intervention: How participation appears? For What, Whom and When?

2008-02-07T17:10:00.003+02:00

Sulukule has been, since the plans for redevelepment became public, -but also before- quite at the focus of local and international attention of intelligentsia, to a degree like few other comparable areas have ever enjoyed. The particular ethnic/cultural background diverted extra attantion to the area. Coverages in local, national and international media, solidarity festivals, artistic production, interest of international institutions and of academic field work of various disciplines, political actions, TV soaps, featured films, were among different forms of interventions and investigations from outside. Consequently Sulukule has become a hotspot, more than other areas affected by similar problems. Among most recent interventions since the planning started can be counted: international conferences in Brussels (EP) and Istanbul - the festival '40 days and 40 nights' by the Sulukule Platform (Asli Kiyak Ingin) - different student groups' workshop from Development Planning Unit of UCLondon and France, foreign journalists like Kai Stritmatters' article in 'die Sueddeutsche' and 'Neue Zürcher Zeitung', the Sea of Dance performance with Roma artists on stage by Sule Ates, and others. While this workshop is being organized, and buildings in the area are pulled down one by one, as selling out process accelarates, the press coverage and degree of external interest grows as well.

They all helped and are helping the Sulukule conflict to popularize in Turkey and abroad. The Inura workshop, itself a typical example of external intelligentsia intervention should deal with the issue of external interventions in a self reflexive way. The group will be encouraged to make observations of the workshop itself, and develop an agenda of self-evaluation or auditing and search the question of locality, the ethics of engagement in neighborhood activist process and the type of participatory practices. Group Coordinators will enable access to past material and works and facilitate discussion about the international and multilevel initiatives in Turkey and abroad. Reflexions and perceptions of the residents on various interventions will constitute another string of inputs.

Group coordinators: Pelin Tan (sociologist, ITU) with Hamdi Gargin (political scientist, IFEA)

Reader:
“Measure for measure : Evaluating the evidence of culture's contribution to regeneration”, Urban Studies, Vol. 42, No5/6, 959-983, May 2005.(in context of cultural interventin in urban regenaration)

"What makes a biopolitical space?" A discussion with Toni Negri, Multitudes 31, 2008. (in context of urban resistance and activism)

“Spatiality, Resistance and the Production of Locality”, P.Tan, 10. İstanbul Biennial catalog, 2007 (in context of urban, locality and ethics)

about İstanbul and Segregation, Urban Frontiers, Pelin Tan, Sarai Reader

TF1 Code 5366: A law for 'protection by renewal' or for enforced gentrification?

2008-02-07T16:41:00.004+02:00

A recently released so called law for 'the sustainable use of downgraded historical real estate through protection by renewal' is the legal basis of the recent transformation efforts in İstanbul. Sulukule is just one neighbourhood among a set of further examples like Fener+Balat, Suleymaniye,Tarlabasi, Algerian street,... The workgroup 'code 5366' will try to construct the overall picture by comparing different areas that are under the threat of law-based regeneration projects. Information about the law as well as its implementation procedures will be the starting point. Visits to the sites (mainly concentrating on the sites Sulukule and Tarlabasi, a very centrally located slum area with mixed migrant population) and contacts to relevant actors (urban regeneration experts, officers from municipalities) will be the focus. Furthermore, the group will be involved in discussions with the local residents on the main goals of the law / law-based projects.

Group coordinators: Tolga İslam with Ferzan Aydın (architects, YTU)

TF2 Planning Sulukule: Business as usual versus alternative paths

2008-02-07T16:41:00.003+02:00

This group will be more technically involved and will deal with the improvement as well as the possible future paths of the new masterplan for Sulukule neighbourhood. Group will be briefed on past developments, how and which actions of different actors caused which alterations of the paln ... The understanding of 'What has happened ? Which interventions have been made ? How successfull were they ? What did / does participation in local context mean ? Whats missing ? How can still be wisely intervened ?" will be essential to the work of this group.Strategies of an alternative physical planning will be explored towards possibilities of a sustainable development based on local traditions in particularly within the music and entertainment sector. Today most locals have to commute to other areas in the city to make a living in the entertainment sector and nightlife, as local entertainment houses were cleansed in the 90s. The past work of the Development Planning Unit / University College of London, last year in Sulukule will also be presented and evaluated within this context. Fener / Balat area, another chapter of gentrification in the historical peninsula by state intervention will be briefly examined as a comparative case study.

Group coordinator: Asli Kiyak Ingin (architect, activist of sulukule platform)

TF3 Resettlement: To cleanse poverty in the center or to build the social city ?

2008-02-07T16:41:00.001+02:00

Renters constitute the least protected or most disadvantaged group according to the official wording of the Code5366. However, politicians are still paying lipservice to the concept of a social city, and offer their solution: Home ownership through mortgage with 'good conditions' in a new housing area built by TOKI, the public Mass Housing Administration. Some incline to accept, some don't. Investigations of the taskforce in the renters' millieu, includes an excursion to Tasholuk, the resettlement area 40 kms away, in the far periphery of the Megapolis. Some residents of the Tasholuk area also express concerns of the Roma becoming their new neighbours. Contacts hereby will include among relevant institutions and experts, also renters of different profile and views from Sulukule as well as residents in Tasoluk. The recently exercised resettlement of the low income Ayazma squatter neighbourhood to Güzelbahce housing development area is a good example of comparison. These districts in the periphery will be visited within the program of the taskforce, resettlers of different categories interviewed.

Group coordinator: Aysim Turkmen (anthropologist, documentary film maker)

TF4 Cultural Identities and Visions: Battlefield of civilizations or possibilities of co-existence ?

2008-02-07T16:40:00.000+02:00

Competing or even combatting visions of cultural identity prevail as paradigms of justification for different renewal/protection strategies on the historical peninsula of Istanbul. Sulukule, as the oldest Roma settlement in town going back to middle ages, with settled, landowner population, the uncontested Walhalla of Roma identity in Turkey is positioned just at the intersection of these. The 'westernized-enlightened' middle classes claim the historical peninsula area within the poor urban core back as part of the world historical heritage. The changing character of Istanbul into a post industrial metropolis puts urban renewal through cultural tourism on the agenda and helps legitimizing these efforts on the metropolitan level. However that enlightened gentrification not only lacks popular backup in the area, it is also underrepresented in local politics on municipality level.The re-islamisation movement since 80s, reinvented a traditon of an Ottoman "golden age", mainly imagining a city of purity. Historical peninsula is regarded as a primary field of reconquista for the revivalists. As the post-islamism recently turned neoliberal, it adapted a hard core, state backed gentrification strategy to benefit the countryside origin rising new middle classes they represent. The Sulukule settlement itself, located just at the Roman City Walls, and next door to a valuable set of Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman relics of monumental and civil architecture; Zeyrek, a 'romantic' medieval neighbourhood at the heart of the peninsula, a hard battlefield of 2 'reconquista' movements as well as of one 'silent takeover'; Suleymaniye, a former high end area around an urban landmark, today making a living by solid waste recycling; as well as Ahirkapi, the showcase of an alternative, 'enlightened-liberal' path for a Roma settlement, just next door to the very touristic highlights in town; they all represent different facettes of the 'local' on the historical peninsula, each with a partly or not yet realized potenial for gentrifcaton and will be visited in the context of the work of this taskforce. The tensions and ongoing fighting as well as a series of necessary compromises and changing coalitions between the three tendencies makes the game most interesting. Taskforces' investigations will cover all three millieus.

Group coordinator: Orhan Esen (social and economic historian, author and tourguide)