Reimaging the City: Istanbul towards Globalization and Commodification

              Vol. 8(3) Special Issue págs. 7-16. 2010
www.pasosonline.org
Reimaging the City: Istanbul towards Globalization and
Commodification
Evinc Dogani
Istanbul Technical University (Turkey)
Abstract: The research aims to facilitate a discourse on urban and cultural identity of the cities versus
invented and projected images created for marketing them. While the city itself becomes a commodity to
be consumed, cultural activities turn into means of promoting and selling it. Integrating conservation and
valorization of cultural heritage in the domain of community development, education and tourism, as
well as encouraging its accessibility and knowledge, can be helpful in raising awareness among
communities on the importance of cultural heritage in its identity. Reimaging the city brings about
reconstructing and rethinking it as a transforming and mutating place by all social, cultural and historical
means.
Keywords: Urban representations; Urban transformation; Identity; Mega-events; Heritage; Tourism.
Resumen: La investigación pretende facilitar el discurso relative a la identidad urbana y cultural de las
ciudades, frente a las imagenes inventadas y proyectadas para su promoción. Mientras la ciudad se con-vierte
en un artículo de consumo, las actividades culturales se tornan en un medio de promoción y venta.
Integrando la conservación y la valorización del patrimonio cultural de la comunidad, la educación y el
turismo, así como alentando su acceso y conocimiento, se puede lograr la concienciación sobre la impor-tancia
del patrimonio cultural para la identidad de la comunidad. El cambio de imagen de la ciudad trae
consigo la reconstrucción y reflexión sobre si misma como sitio de transformación y mutación gracias a
sus medios sociales, culturales e históricos.
Palabras clave: Representaciones urbanas; Transformación urbana; Identidad; Mega-eventos; Patrimo-nio;
Turismo.
i Istanbul Technical University, Turkey (MSc. in History of Architecture); Boğaziçi University, Turkey (BA in Tour-ism
Administration); E-mail: evinch_99@yahoo.com
8 Reimaging the City
Visualizing the City of Signs
Cities are complex systems of represen-tations
in which space and time are un-derstood
and experienced in the form of a
portrayal. The systems of representations
are composed of signs: written words,
painting, photographic images, maps and
signals, filmic narratives, choreographic
movements, installations and events, build-ings
and places (Borden et al., 2001). These
selective representations (re)shape the me-taphors
and narratives which are widely
used to describe the experience of urban
living. In this sense, the city is recognized
as an interface between individual expe-rience
and cultural representations (Miles-tone,
2008: 1165). Cities play a major role
in the construction and experience of the
cultures of everyday life and, within their
spaces, collective and individual meanings
are made and unmade and identities are
formed (Stevenson, 2003).
Similarly places to visit are chosen
through representations that are sustained
through a variety of non-tourist practices,
such as films, newspapers, TV, magazines,
records, and videos which create the ‘tour-ist
gaze’. Moreover the gaze is constructed
through signs, and tourism involves the
collection of those signs (Urry, 1995). What
is consumed in tourism are visual signs and
sometimes a simulacrum in which tourists
are the semioticians (Urry, 1990). The sig-nificance
of visual consumption can be seen
in the pervasive tendency to produce
‘themed’ environments. The top-down poli-cies
for urban regeneration are mostly
aimed at brushing up the facades of the old
buildings and creating pastiched surfaces
leading to what MacCannell (1973: 595)
calls ‘staged authenticity’. What is sought
for in a holiday is a set of photographic
images which have been already seen in
glossy brochures or other media.
Vedutismo - the influential Italian art of
imaging the city - evolved from a veritable
pandemic of urban imaging and a hunger -
a taste - for viewing sites. As an art of view-ing
in the Italian ‘vedute’, the portrait of
the city was staged. Masters of this type of
representation include Canaletto and Pan-nini
(18th century). As they merged the
codes of urban topography and landscape
painting city views, they also incorporated
the cartographic drive, creating imagina-tive
representational maps. Imaging a city
in fact involves a cluster of multiple diverse
maps that are inhabited and physically
carried around by city dwellers. More than
a factual accuracy, it was rather an exhi-bited
interest in rendering a mental ‘image
of the city’ and it proposed not a single
‘cognitive mapping’ but diverse observa-tional
routes. The art of viewing followed
the older touristic drive to embrace a ter-rain
that led to climbing of church towers,
mountains and buildings to take in the
panorama (Bruno, 2007).
Baudelaire developed a derived meaning
of the French term ‘flâneur’ — that of "a
person who walks the city in order to expe-rience
it". His description of flâneur has a
key role in understanding, participating in
and portraying the city. Simmel and Ben-jamin
adopted the concept as a product of
modernity. The modern city was transform-ing
humans, giving them a new relation-ship
to time and space. According to Sim-mel,
the deepest problems of modern life
derive from the claim of the individual to
preserve the autonomy and individuality of
his existence in the face of overwhelming
social forces, of historical heritage, of ex-ternal
culture, and of the technique of life
(Weinstein, 1950). Benjamin, on the other
hand, became his own prime example of
flâneur, making social and aesthetic obser-vations
during long walks through Paris.
His description of flâneur is an uninvolved
character but highly perceptive toward an
aesthetically attuned observation, which
brought the term into the literature of pho-tography.
Sontag (1977: 55) claims that
hand-held camera has become the tool of
the flâneur:
“The photographer is an armed version
of the solitary walker reconnoitering,
stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the
voyeuristic stroller who discovers the
city as a landscape of voluptuous ex-tremes.
Adept of the joys of watching,
connoisseur of empathy, the flâneur
finds the world 'picturesque'.”
Benjamin, in his writings on social and
urban life in 19th century Paris, has shown
that representation entered fully into the
commodity relation by its production of an
Evinc Dogan 9
economy of display in which the spaces of
visual display and mass consumption are
included. The visual, informational and the
exotic were commodified through the new
and global imagery: the national exhibition
(Crystal Palace), the panorama, the plate-glass
window and the shopping arcade in
which the world of people, places and goods
were gathered for display and consumption
(Pickles, 2003). Not merely commodities
are being displayed in world exhibitions,
but also their metropolitan sites are being
represented too. In other words, visitors to
these exhibitions participated in the con-sumption
of symbols of the city itself. The
city is not merely epitomized through the
display of all the important styles of the
present cultural world but also, through ‘its
own production, a city can represent itself
as a copy and sample of the manufacturing
forces of the world culture’ (Frisby, 2001).
Recent accounts of urban political change
have been typified by the speculative dep-loyment
of resources to attract investment.
Within such processes, the construction of
spectacular urban landscapes has become a
requisite strategy for making the city at-tractive
as a site for investment, yet, with a
few notable exceptions, the meanings pro-jected
by these landscapes have been given
little attention (Hubbard, 1996: 1441).
Marketing the City: Creative Cities and
Mega-Events
City-marketing and place-branding
strategies today often stress ideas and ste-reotypes
of culture and creativity to pro-mote
attractive urban images (Vanolo,
2008: 370). Cities compete with each other
in (re)producing and promoting their urban
heritage and symbolic assets for tourism
(Urry, 1990). The medium of competition
has become the activities on the city. The
attractiveness of these activities brings an
increase in the number of tourists and this
growth contributes remarkably to the econ-omy
of the state (Beyazıt & Tosun, 2006).
In light of the convergence of the inner
circle of cultural tourism (heritage and arts
tourism) and the outer circle (lifestyle and
the creative industries), product develop-ment
will become increasingly important
for cities who want to offer a differential
advantage and thereby stay ahead of the
competition. Urban cultural tourism re-lated
product development can range from
the potential offered by cultural diversity
and ethnicity, culinary culture, fashion and
design to signature architecture for cultur-al
institutions, cultural festivals and events
(World Tourism Organisation and Euro-pean
Travel Commission, 2005).
The development of urban cultural fes-tivals
and their support of political authori-ty
and local economy dates back to the Ro-man
Empire. From the mid-19th century
onwards, however, the fashion for new
large-scale, prolonged and spectacular city-based
festivals gathered pace (Gold & Gold,
2005). The staging of the 1851 Great Exhi-bition
in London's Hyde Park, which is also
known as the Crystal Palace Exhibition, as
a temporary structure made of iron and
glass designed by Joseph Paxton, had be-come
an emblem of the ‘commodity fetish-ism’
– the term used by Marx to describe
the phenomenon of consumption. In this
sense, the Crystal Palace was the precursor
of the modern department store or shop-ping
mall: unlimited objects of desire in one
public space (Thackeray & Findling, 2002).
Mitchell’s argument is that starting from
the exhibitions of modern capitalism such
as the Crystal Palace – the world is
represented by the exhibition itself; simply
a further series of representations of a real-ity
that we cannot know except in the forms
of symbols that are culturally determined
(Mazlish, 1994: 55). As we refer back to
Benjamin’s Arcades Project, we can think of
the Crystal Palace as a shopping arcade
creating a new and global imagery for con-sumption
(Pickles, 2003), which would be
joined by an ever-growing list of events
that included sports meetings, garden fes-tivals,
song competitions, international arts
festivals, major trade fairs, awards cere-monies,
scientific congresses and mega-events.
One good example for mega-events
is the European Capital of Culture (ECOC)
programme in which the city is given a
chance to showcase its cultural life and
heritage for a period of one year (Gold &
Gold, 2005).
According to the definition of cultural
heritage by UNESCO (2008), the term en-compasses
several main categories such as
movable-immovable or tangible-intangible.
The term ‘cultural heritage’ includes build-
10 Reimaging the City
ings, monuments, landscapes, urban areas,
countryside, buried remains and objects
that are classic and contemporary, and it
contributes to the identity and branding of
territory, so relevant in an age of globaliza-tion
(Pugliese & Da Sacco, 2007). Heritage
is part of a common past; it is a source of
the community identity as it offers us vari-ous
perspectives to ponder over our histo-ries,
identities and our current standing.
The preservation of heritage allows us to
construct our collective memories and es-tablishes
our cultural identities, as it in-cludes
the common patrimony of historical
evidences (identity and memory) of a specif-ic
territory that needs to be safeguarded in
a combined process of protection, manage-ment
and usage. However this does not and
should not necessarily mean making up
historical sites into museums. Between the
possibilities of making the territorial defi-nition
of cultural district reachable and
preserving cultural heritage, there is a
combination of interests aimed at visualiz-ing
possible strategic development actions.
For Lefebvre ‘space is produced and re-produced,
and thus represents the site and
the outcome of social, political and econom-ic
struggle’. Heritage is a key element in
those processes of the production and re-production
of power relationships (Graham,
Ashworth and Tunbridge, 2000). Recogniz-ing
local/global relationships and conflicts
is essential to address cultural continuity
in recognizing the intangible cultural prac-tices
and heritage resources of the histori-cally
built environment. History, traditions,
local lifestyle, art and culture are intangi-ble
elements of the cultural heritage that
shape the built environment, vernacular
architecture and cultural landscape. Here
the crucial point is forming a collective
cultural memory for communities and to
communicate these intangible categories to
the future generations. Another question
which should be asked is the level of con-sciousness
as well as the level of interac-tion.
Various interest groups affect the lev-el
of public consciousness: Governmental
and non-governmental organizations, in-ternational
non-profit organizations, etc.
This is done through legislations and pro-tection
of listed buildings, the organization
of fairs and festivals, visual media such as
documentaries and films and all other re-lated
media, public campaigns and mega
events such as the ECOC Program. The
result is not only raising the consciousness
level of the local community, but also at-tracting
visitors to the site, as cultural her-itage
can be lost due to lack of awareness
and interest. On the other hand, intense
promotional campaigns to attract a high
number of visitors may result in exceeding
carrying capacity of the historical site and
damaging the cultural heritage.
Cities that have been awarded as Cul-tural
Capitals of Europe and that are pro-moted
to the public with their outstanding
cultural properties constitute a good basis
to determine issues related to urban herit-age,
urban transformation, culture politics
and continuity in terms of socio-cultural
and socio-economic aspects. The transfor-mation
does not only happen on the urban
level but also occurs on the national and
transnational level. The designation of Is-tanbul
as one of three very different capi-tals
of culture for 2010 reflects the chang-ing
nature of the European Union’s space
and identity and the evolving capital of
culture program (Hein, 2008).
Cities can intensify, exploit and even re-invent
their image and identity through the
ECOC process. It is a fact that ECOC
presents a valuable opportunity to market
cities. In this sense, 1990 has been a turn-ing
point in the history of cultural capitals
of Europe with the designation of Glasgow,
a non-capital city. It has changed the scale
of the event and showed that the pro-gramme
could evolve into something that
played a strong promotional and regenera-tive
role. Staging of major cultural events is
often seen as more flexible and distinctive
carriers of the symbolic capital of a place
than hard infrastructure-based projects.
Thus, the example of Glasgow stands for
‘new style’ urban cultural policies as well as
cultural production and consumption. It
allowed the municipal authorities to under-take
a rebranding exercise to confront the
city's established image as a dour manufac-turing
city, build venues that would enrich
local cultural life when the festival was
over, and use culture as an engine to pro-mote
urban regeneration (Gold & Gold,
2005). The social and cultural transforma-tion
gained a different and multidimen-sional
structure by bringing a new model to
Evinc Dogan 11
promote the city through art and culture
events. Artists, designers, architects, intel-lectuals
are attracted to the city as a part of
urban development policies; art and culture
zones are created. In this way, a new image
is created for Glasgow: “creative city”.
Like in many sectors and projects, crea-tivity
is very important in the ECOC
project. So as the time is limited, the
projects that will represent the city should
be creative, expressive and impressive
(Beyazıt & Tosun, 2006). With mass media
and mass tourism as their most powerful
tools, intercultural communication is large-ly
based on image transfer. Nonetheless,
without a carefully structured approach,
these opportunities may be overlooked and
indeed wasted, with a huge expense in-curred
on the part of the city with little or
no long term benefits for its residents (Bes-son
& Sutherland, 2007). The question is
whether the projects within the frame of
ECOC are the outcomes of a strategic plan-ning
process which lead to sustainability or
if they are short-term projects to create an
alluring theatrical stage for the sake of
marketing.
Reimaging the City: Case of Istanbul
Istanbul has been a gateway between
Asia and Europe or in general terms East
and West through the ages. The popular
‘bridge’ metaphor also represents a connec-tion
between the past and the present. The
city that has been the capital of three em-pires
(Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman) in
the past is now getting prepared for 2010.
Similar to many “global cities” Istanbul
is exposed to economic, social and political
changes along with the bombardment of
globalization, which has brought rapid and
chaotic urbanization. There is still some-thing
mystical in Istanbul, mostly because
of the Orientalist representations of the
city. Although the city silhouette with mi-narets
is still in place, it is now coupled
with the image of a metropolis in pace with
global standards: a booming culture indus-try,
lively entertainment and night life, five
star hotels, business districts and shopping
malls. The change of the city image from an
oriental portrait to a multicultural Euro-pean
city vibrating with arts and culture
started synchronously with negotiations on
Turkey’s European Union membership and
the designation for the ECOC (Ozkan,
2008). Improving the capital’s image was
the concluding order of the business. The
models most admired were the European
capitals. The deterioration of Istanbul so
troubled the rulers that many attempts
were undertaken to bring the old city up to
modern standards (Celik, 1993).
Tourism has become a tool to demon-strate
to the European Union the economic,
technological and physical, as well as the
conservative/Islamic power change in the
social context of Istanbul; in other words,
the making of a stage for the ‘dialogue of
civilizations’ between the West and the
Islamic countries, as well as a stage for the
Cultural Capital of Europe in 2010 has
been introduced through the ‘tourist gaze’.
In the period of the ‘tourist gaze’, Istanbul
has witnessed the physicalization of multi-national
investments through an upscale
architectural vocabulary including multi-use
complexes of residential towers, offices
and shopping malls located in globalized
cores of ‘social distinction’ (Akpınar, 2008).
Within the emergence of the new global
politics and economics, the municipal pro-gram
of Istanbul may be seen as a ‘market-ing
strategy’ for attracting foreign invest-ment
and tourists. The government clearly
declared that “marketing Istanbul” is their
priority in the highly competitive interna-tional
tourism sector and supported the
idea of the museumized Historic Peninsula
(Kayaalp, 2008). In 2005, the law (no. 5366)
on the ‘Preservation by Renovation and
Utilization by Revitalizing of Deteriorated
Immovable Historical and Cultural Proper-ties’
was approved by the Council of Minis-ters.
The law aims “reconstruction and
restoration of the zones which are regis-tered
and declared as SIT (Conservation)
areas by boards of conservation of cultural
and natural assets which have been worn
down and are loosing their characteristics”
(Act No: 5366, 2005). To give an example,
the districts of Fener, Balat, Süleymaniye,
Tarlabaşı and Sulukule, which are the
places where diverse ethnic groups (Jews,
Armenians, Greeks) used to live, now have
changed into poor urban areas where cul-tural
properties are not taken care of.
The government plans to clean up these
areas by moving out the current population
12 Reimaging the City
for “gentrification” purposes and by renew-ing
the historical buildings. The renovation
and redevelopment of the area, like many
similar plans, seems to be a part of the
“identity construction” project of the ruling
party through a top-down implementation.
The “revitalization” of two of these targeted
areas, Sulukule and Tarlabaşı, will involve
the mass displacement of local populations.
Socially, these two areas of Istanbul embo-dy
precisely what makes the city so emble-matic
of European culture in the 21st cen-tury:
migration. In the last fifty years, as
the city’s population has increased ten fold
because of migration from Turkey’s East,
the neighborhood has become a squatter’s
zone, home to Kurdish and Arabic speakers
whose culture is synonymous with many
aspects of contemporary Istanbul life. What
both neighborhoods have in common is the
fact that, in spite of the contributions of
their communities to the city’s vibrancy,
their inhabitants are overwhelmingly poor.
They also comprise populations whose exis-tence
is a threat to myths of nation-state
identity (Pine, 2008). On the other hand,
without local people, the heritage looses the
meaning and the renewal projects only
touch the facades of the buildings, creating
a theatrical stage of the history.
Figure 1. Conservation Areas: Fener, Balat, Süleymaniye, Tarlabaşı, and Sulukule
The social and cultural transformation
gained a different and multidimensional
structure by bringing a new model to pro-mote
the city through art and culture
events. Artists, designers, architects, intel-lectuals
are attracted to the city as a part of
Evinc Dogan 13
urban development policies; art and culture
zones are created. In this way, a new image
is created: “creative city”. Major cultural
events staged are often seen as more flexi-ble
and as distinctive carriers of the sym-bolic
capital of a place than hard infra-structure-
based projects. Istanbul seems to
emerge as a ‘creative city’. Thus, contempo-rary
art events, biennials and festivals
have become a vital economic development
strategy in cityscapes that are increasingly
characterized by social segmentation and
gentrification, and thus may actually feed
into exclusionary practices in the urban
realm. However what makes the difference
is the ‘urban experience’. Jacobs says that;
“The streets are the vital organs of the
creative city. After all, people meet in
the streets and it is here that human
contact, unexpected encounters and
business life take place. This street bal-let
contributes to creativity and econom-ic
dynamics.’’ (Hospers & van Dalm,
2005: 10)
The melting-pot metaphor and chaotic
structure with crowds of people from differ-ent
nationalities, ethnicities and speaking
different languages are signifiers of the
heterogeneity of Istanbul’s urban culture
and rich cultural life not in buildings, ci-nema
and theater halls but on the streets
of the city. As Florida argues, creative ci-ties
are able to combine the T’s of Toler-ance,
Talent and Technology. Jacobs brings
about urban environment and the need for
urban diversity: diversity of buildings,
people and their economic activities as a
helping hand to Florida’s creative triad
(Hospers & van Dalm, 2005: 11). As well as
its melting-pot structure, the diversity in
Istanbul is formed through “union of the
opposites”. As Istanbul is a city between
‘Orient and Occident’, the conflicting sides
are not perceived as somewhat negative but
on the contrary they are appraised as qual-ities
enriching the city and its identity.
Different ethnic groups living in the same
neighborhood, churches, synagogues and
mosques in vicinity to each other, booming
population with continuous migration de-spite
the carrying capacity of the land, sky-scrapers
rising shoulder by shoulder with
“gecekondus” - they all seem like the signs
of a problematic and chaotic city. The
sphere of circulation – of commodities,
money and individuals – provides the basis
for an image of the city as a highly complex
web of interactions verging on the chaotic
(Frisby, 2001). As Foucault (1970) notes,
discourses constitute not only representa-tions
that lie at a surface covering “reality;”
they form concepts, political positioning,
and most substantially, “the order of
things”. Decq claims that for most of the
people, there is not much to discover in the
planned, orderly cities of Europe, and on
the contrary, there is always a lot to dis-cover
in a chaotic city like Istanbul (Atma-ca,
2005). As such, the Dutch ‘starchitect’
Rem Koolhaas expresses his excitement
about the “chaotic” and “self-generating”
quality of Istanbul (Ozkan, 2008 qtd. in
Arkitera Online 17.04.2005). Conception of
Istanbul as a “nicely chaotic and thereby
exciting” city is also what makes the differ-ence.
The distinctiveness of the places pro-vides
attachment to particular neighbor-hoods
or cities, given that people perceive
places through their own identity and cha-racteristics.
These characteristics can be
anonymity, uncertainty and unpredictabili-ty
of events in complex and urban envi-ronments,
the senses of possibility and
danger induced by cities. Conover (2004)
goes beyond the chaos and claims that ‘de-lirium’
rules Istanbul:
“Istanbul wrote delirious into the script
of the urban imaginary. “What protects
us against delirium or hallucinations
are not our critical powers but the struc-ture
of our space,” Merleau-Ponty wrote.
In the case of Istanbul, there is no pro-tection.
Delirium is order”.
In such representations, it is suggested
that chaos or delirium would be the quin-tessential
representations of Istanbul’s
urban order, thus giving its uniqueness.
In July, 2005 Istanbul hosted the 22nd
World Architecture Congress, organized by
the International Union of Architects
(UIA). Şefik Onat, the Head of the UIA
2005 Organization Committee, highlighted
Istanbul as being “the most problematic
city of the world”, in contrast to Florence as
“the world’s center of art and culture“ and
Nagoya as “the most perfect city of the
world”, which were the other two candi-dates
for the same year. Interpreting Is-tanbul’s
problematic urbanization as a po-tential
point of attraction for architects,
14 Reimaging the City
Onat was already giving clues of the up-coming
celebrations of Istanbul as a chaotic
city (Ozkan, 2008).
The congress was a great opportunity
for Istanbul in terms of contributing to the
city’s tourism sector because it would in-clude
a lot of publicity and thus promote
the city’s image on the world stage. The
billboards featured photographs of mosques
by the 16th century Ottoman master archi-tect
Sinan, while banners stretched on pe-destrian
overpasses displayed a monoch-rome
sketch of the Maiden’s Tower, one of
the iconographic symbols commonly used in
publicity campaigns about Istanbul. That
is, the iconography of the city’s welcome
call to architects was not much different
from the touristic and commercial imagery
used to make Istanbul look appealing to its
touristically motivated visitors (Ozkan,
2008).
Conclusion
It is expected that the ECOC will foster
the improvement of tourism in the city and
Istanbul will attract more tourists with its
new image. However, when the project is
approached from the tourism side, being
the European Capital of Culture will be no
different than hosting the Olympic Games
or Formula 1. What is different about the
ECOC from the other events is the under-standing
of the concept of “culture”. The
crucial point is to place culture as a driving
force in city development, not to consume it
to become more competitive. Here, the in-tegration
of the projects with the social and
physical structure of Istanbul becomes very
important, as they are thought as a part of
cultural policy (Beyazıt & Tosun, 2006).
Combining the physical city and the servic-es/
events creates the city’s image. This
image can be of beauty, excitement, charm,
or artistic value. The image can also arise
from the lifestyles and values of the local
residents, such as an ethnic culture, the
friendly attitude of the residents, etc. This
combination of physical product, services
and events provided, and the image of the
city is part of the experience of visiting the
place. It is actually this entire experience
that must be promoted when marketing a
city (Kolb, 2006).
Tourism is one of the main mechanisms
to reformulate Istanbul through its charac-teristics.
In Robins’ words “the particulari-ty
and identity of cities is about product
differentiation; their cultures and tradi-tions
are now sustained through the dis-courses
of marketing and advertising” (Do-gan,
2005: 20 qtd. in Robins, 1993: 306).
Keyder (2000) states that, Istanbul has to
take part in the global mobility in accor-dance
with the concept of “global city”.
Therefore, globalization brings about rei-maging
Istanbul as a world capital and
marketing it in the global market. Howev-er,
together with the globalization and its
effects, it is also crucial to think of the ref-lections
on the society. An urban space is
not solely an image to be sold through the
media, but rather it is something to be ex-perienced
physically through high level of
interaction with its inhabitants, history,
culture and heritage. Today culture indus-tries,
governments and private sectors sep-arate
the culture from its urban context
and create new values through the process
so called ‘urban renewal’. There is a gap
between local needs and the cultural poli-cies
due to the absence of local community’s
representation. The Municipality is so oc-cupied
with “marketing Istanbul” that it
seems to miss one point of the creative tri-ad:
Tolerance! Although the marketing
strategies emphasize ethnic diversity to
celebrate Istanbul as a world city, the reali-ty
is different. The minority groups and
Romani populations are subjected to social
stigmatization and exclusion. Nonetheless,
the creative city cannot be constructed on
glamorous projects of ‘Starchitects’ or
world-famous artists simply, but can only
be achieved by encouraging its citizens to
take an active role and to participate. The
creative city needs creative citizens.
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Recibido:
Reenviado:
15/09/2009
20/12/2009
Aceptado: 23/02/2010
Sometido a evaluación por pares anónimos