Regeneration, Heritage and Sustainable Communities in Turkey

Challenges, Complexities and Potentials

Muge Akkar Ercan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781315385969
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Over the last three decades, historic housing areas have become one of the major concerns in urban regeneration, housing renovation and conservation projects. Since the late 1990s, the notion of community, sustainability and sustainable community have become rising issues in the urban regeneration debate. Regeneration, Heritage and Sustainable Communities in Turkey contributes to this debate by integrating the interplay between regeneration, community needs and sustainability in the context of Istanbul. Together with the relational, multi-scalar and contingency planning approaches, these vital agents of regeneration provide new possibilities and creative opportunities to successfully deal with the uncertainties and complexities in evolving regeneration spaces. The interdisciplinary text reasons that finding the balance between the needs, aspirations and concerns of local communities and the conservation of the built environments will lead to more equitable and sustainable solutions to the problems faced in Istanbul's historic quarters.

1 Introduction

The world is experiencing the largest wave of urban growth in history. Cities currently accommodate more than half of the world’s population. This is estimated to rise to almost 8.5 billion by 2030 and 9.7 billion by 2050 (UN, 2015). By 2030, 60% of people are expected to live in urban areas globally, and one in every three people will live in cities with at least half a million citizens (UN DESA, 2016). This means that over 60% of the land projected to become urban is yet to be built (UN DESA, 2016). However, there is still no justification for the current urban growth leading to more sustainable and inclusive, more equal and fair, and more tolerant and resilient cities. Today, urban areas contribute up to 70% of the total greenhouse gas emissions and almost 70% of world energy consumption with the trend of both increasing (IEA, 2008). While unsustainable human lifestyles, material production and consumerism impact negatively on people’s lives, climate change, environmental pollution and biodiversity loss reveal the growing need to reduce energy and material flows and lower environmental impacts (Grimm et al., 2008; Luederitz et al., 2013).

Simultaneous to urbanisation, poverty increases in cities. According to the Slum Almanac 2015/2016, nearly one billion people (i.e. one in eight people in the world) live in slum areas that suffer from overpopulation, pollution and crimes, and lack basic services, such as adequate living space, clean water, sanitation, housing durability and security of tenure (UN-Habitat, 2015b). The vast majority, comprising an estimated one-third of the population, are located in the Global South countries with developing economies (UN-Habitat, 2015a). For instance, almost 60% of the urban population in sub-Saharan Africa already lives in slums (UN-Habitat, 2015a). Considering the current tendencies, the total number of slum dwellers is estimated to increase twofold by 2030, and this will put excessive pressures on cities around the world (UN-Habitat [United Nations Human Settlements Programme], 2007). According to UN-Habitat (2015a), more than half of the world’s population will live in sub-human conditions in the future. Increasing socio-spatial segregation, crime, social exclusion and polarisation in cities adversely affects economic and social justice and environmental quality, increases the need for adequate shelter and urban infrastructure, and thereby calls for more efficient and sustainable urban, economic, social and environmental development policies.

From the 1970s onwards, the concept of sustainability, mostly seen as a panacea for the multifaceted problems of cities, has become indispensable not just in housing policy, but in consideration of human settlements, infrastructure, urban services, transportation and employment (Hempel, 1999; Choguill, 2007). The growing interest in sustainability is generally explained in a variety of ways. At the global level, new paradigms appear in relation with the degradation of the natural environment, energy crisis, climate change, safety and security, growing diversity and socio-spatial inequalities, and socio-demographic changes, causing metropolisation and threatening democratic institutions. At the local level, people demand affordable and good quality housing, and liveable neighbourhoods with adequate public services, sustainable mobility and green areas (Hempel, 1999). This ultimately reveals the rising importance of creating sustainable cities and communities.

Why is developing sustainable communities (SCs) in heritage geographies critical?

Creating SCs in historic geographies is indispensable; however, it is extremely challenging. Heritage geographies with multi-layered values are precious resources and assets for present and future societies (Avrami et al., 2000; Jensen, 2000; Mason and Avrami, 2000; Throsby, 2000). Although the conservation and management of heritage geographies in an effective manner is essential, changing economic, social, political, legal, institutional and administrative conditions often turn this legacy into a big liability. Many historic quarters and neighbourhoods in cities are under the threat of decay, loss and abandonment due to changing local economies, competing demands for land use, high costs of restoration, complexities of legal conservation procedures, disagreement among shareholders, and other factors (Lichfield, 1997; Strange, 1997). The physical deprivation of historic neighbourhoods is often accompanied by low property prices and rents, making such areas appealing for the urban poor. In general, these areas are associated with several economic and social problems, such as lower-educated inhabitants in poor health, high unemployment and crime rates, and increasing social exclusion (Power and Tunstall, 1995; Wallace, 2001). Consequently, historic urban quarters become the main areas of challenge to be tackled for local authorities (LAs), professionals and other conservation and regeneration initiatives in cities.

From the 1980s onwards, the focus of many central and local governments shifted to regeneration of historic quarters with such problems. Many heritageled regeneration projects primarily responded to the economic and physical decline of urban spaces by predominantly engaging in property development (Healey et al., 1992; Imrie and Thomas, 1993; Cameron and Doling, 1994; Hill, 2000; Imrie and Raco, 2003). Since the 1990s, along with sustainability debates, urban regeneration started to be conceived as a holistic and integrated vision involving a series of actions that would address the multidimensional problems of urban areas through a lasting improvement in the physical, economic, environmental and social conditions of deprived urban areas (Roberts and Sykes, 2000; Couch et al., 2013; Leary and McCarthy, 2013). It has been regarded as a remedy to combat social polarisation and fragmentation, bolster local economies and improve the tax basis of the cities through an economic and socio-spatial reorganisation, thereby raising their competitive capacities in national and international markets (Swyngedouw et al., 2002). Despite these expectations, the impacts and success of regeneration initiatives and programmes are widely discussed as an integral part of globalised neoliberal policies. Extensive research on these projects reveals that they have been poorly integrated into the wider urban process and planning system, and changed the priorities of public budgets which have been increasingly redirected from social objectives to investments in the built environment and the restructuring of the labour market (Swyngedou wet al., 2002; Lovering, 2007; Leary and McCarthy, 2013). Furthermore, these schemes have been criticised for causing the rise of gentrification and the displacement of low-income communities, thereby increasing socio-economic inequalities and polarisation via real estate markets and new forms of governance (Swyngedouw et al., 2002; Leary and McCarthy, 2013; Lovering, 2007; Leary and McCarthy, 2013).

Parallel to these debates, a rapidly growing literature on sustainability has firmly and eagerly recommended building sustainable cities and communities to cure the multidimensional and complex urban problems, including those in the historic quarters of cities (Barton, 2000; Lafferty, 2001; Pugh, 2001; Agyeman, 2005; Couch et al., 2013). In the early 2000s, the discussions on urban regeneration policies have focused on social sustainability and community-related issues (Roberts and Sykes, 2000; Audit Commission, 2001; Nelson, 2001; Vicari, 2001; Birch, 2002; EU, 2002; Imrie and Raco, 2003; Colantonio and Dixon, 2011; Landorf, 2011). Despite the change in the policy agenda, it is still debateable how far the recent regeneration initiatives and efforts in historic neighbourhoods have succeeded in developing SCs, while, at the same time, conserving heritage geographies.

In a rapidly changing and uncertain world driven by globalisation and neoliberalism, the problems, threats and challenges regarding regeneration geographies appear to be far more complicated. Under the complex and uncertain circumstances, how can urban planning confront such ‘new’ issues as sustainable cities and communities? How can planning practice successfully deal with the continuously emerging obstacles, challenges and conflicts in cities? How do power relations, governmentality and conflicting interests increase complexities and uncertainties? And, how can community needs, heritage and governance help address these complexities and uncertainties? The relational approach presents the claim that there is a need to construct a relational understanding of time, space and cities in order to develop sophisticated planning actions for places in a contemporary globalising world (Graham and Healey, 1999). Hence, the relational perspective can play a critical role, first in understanding the complexities of urban problems and issues related to conservation, regeneration and communities, and second in finding more equitable and sustainable solutions to these problems.

Relational theories of urban space

Relational theories of urban space stem from the critics of the modernist planning discourse. First, the modernist planning perspective conceives ‘space’ as a spatially Euclidian, fixed, unique and self-contained entity within which the spatial processes and relations that shape cities are acted out or represented, and it comprehends ‘time’ as a universal and single container for events that flow in a one-directional and linear way (Lefebvre, 1984; Graham and Healey, 1999). Different from the modernist planning discourse, relational theories consider ‘space’ as a dynamic and relational construct, produced through multivalent processes embedded in broader sets of social relations (Jessop et al., 2008; Hillier, 2010). The relational theory discourse shows the heterogeneity of the time–space experiences within and between cities, postulating that the city is not a unitary phenomenon within a single time–space (Amin and Graham, 1998; Giddens, 1979; Lash and Urry, 1994; Thrift, 2014). Instead, for relational theories, the city is the sphere where several different concepts, experiences and representations of time–space continuously impact and are impacted within individual places (Graham and Healey, 1999). Hence, the urban space needs to be examined and understood as embedded and heterogeneous spatio-temporalities that such processes contain (Harvey, 1996). Therefore, being closely connected to the manifold and multiple space–times, planning ‘actively tries to configure the times of human progress, ecological changes and the rhythms of daily life and its destruction’ (Graham and Healey, 1999: 627).

Second, the modernist planning discourse uses a Euclidean and objectoriented depiction of cities that often implicitly results in the unbiased and single representations of places (Graham and Healey, 1999). Whilst this depiction and discourse represents cities as power-laden acts, it only sheds light on certain parts of the urban ‘story’, but inexorably neglects other aspects (Boyer, 1995; Byrne, 1996; Harvey, 1996). Relational theories, however, conceive ‘spaces’ as dynamic, non-linear and multiplex, and they regard ‘socially-constructed places’ as diverse, non-contiguous and superimposed (Graham and Healey, 1999). Thus, spaces need to be articulated in networks of relations and understandings (Massey, 1993). More specifically, spaces are set and bounded by not only place-based relations, but also cultural, social, economic, political and environmental links and relations that are driven by intense interconnections and flows, over larger and larger geographical scales (Adams, 1995; Mulgan, 1997). Therefore, cities should be conceived as ‘multiple spaces’ that are relationally constructed, interlinked and superimposed within extending ‘urban’ regions through a ‘power geometry’ which means that ‘the freedom to extend one’s actions in time and space is a form of power over space, time, social processes, and people’ (Massey, 1993; Graham and Healey, 1999: 629).

Third, according to relational theories, cities can no longer be seen as isolated, bound and unitary economies. An integrated network of ‘global cities’ and ‘network society’ has emerged across the world through international, distanciated flows and relations of national economies, societies and cultures (Sassen, 1991; Castells, 1996). Specialised urban economies have been interlinked via high-capacity telecommunications and rapid transport networks, while, at the same time, new nodes and hubs have emerged and been graded with a multi-level hierarchy (Giddens, 1990; Castells, 1996; Graham and Marvin, 1996, 2001; Mulgan, 1997). In many urban and regional economies, splintering urbanism is the norm in which exchanges and interchanges are disembedded from the immediate locale (Graham and Marvin, 2001). Advanced industrial cities with the new information-rich and service-based economies are connected into internationalising networks of flows, and dominated increasingly by transnational corporations (Graham, 1996). Similarly, mediated by electronic communications and rapid transport networks, many individuals, families and companies have complex relations with family, friends, work contacts, partners or business suppliers and markets, but few or no close connections and links to their neighbours in their street or business environment (Graham and Healey, 1999).

Nonetheless, globalisation requires localisation. Within the newly emerging urban landscapes, place and urban propinquity still continue to matter in a globalised economy (Storper, 1997a, 1997b; Armstrong, 2010). Certain places that offer prestige, services and infrastructures and reinforce the emergence of trust, reciprocity and innovation that other places do not, insulate against risk (Graham and Healey, 1999). Therefore, in this newly emerging urban system, it is critical to adopt more culturally, socially and institutionally sensitive and nuanced approaches to the interlinkages between place, technology, economy, institutions and governance (Graham and Healey, 1999).

Finally, emerging theories of social agency and institutional ordering that are featured by multiple time–spaces, diverse stakeholders and manifold perspectives widen and deepen our understanding about the nature of planning in contemporary cities and societies. The institutionalist and communicative perspective in planning theory (Forester, 1993; Healey, 1997) and the ‘actor–network’ theory (Callon, 1986; Latour, 1993) emphasise the need for relational and contingent approaches to social ‘ordering’, and to the configuration of discourses, ‘texts’ and technical artefacts, such as planning documents, within broader social contexts (Bingham, 1996). For both perspectives, it is critic...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of acronyms and abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• 2. ‘Sustainable community’ as an evolving notion
• 3. A relational understanding of regeneration in heritage geographies: Sustainability, community needs and governance
• 4. Sustainability, community needs and governance in the regeneration policy agenda of Turkey
• 5. While making Istanbul a global city, what has happened in the heritage geographies?
• 6. A ‘demolished community’ in Sulukule
• 7. A ‘transforming community’ in Fener and Balat
• 8. ‘Self-motivated and governing community’ in Kuzguncuk
• 9. Challenges, complexities and potentials of regenerating historic neighbourhoods and building sustainable communities in Istanbul
• 10. Conclusions Is sustainable community development possible or only a dream in Turkey?
• List of translations
• Index