Planner on vacation solves critical urban issues in unsuspecting global city

In a bold, three-step maneuver over the past two weeks, an American urban planner on a fortnight’s vacation in Istanbul has developed a clear and concise mental map for solving the burgeoning global city’s nagging problems through a new urban politics. The city, which has doubled in size since his last visit in 1995, tempers its glorious scenery, deep and complex patrimony and vibrant artistic and intellectual scenes with brutal traffic, an inadequate public realm and a growth machine threatening to wreak havoc on its human, built and natural environments.

“It’s really quite simple,” said Arthur Schatzburg, between sips of Efes™ while sitting in a funky outdoor café in Cihangir after a particularly challenging five lira yoga class at a nearby studio. “First of all, the global city discourse is a canard in the case of Istanbul. You could argue that it was one of the first global cities, and has always been a major crossroads of capital flows. The question is not how to resist globalization, but how to make the current round of globalization work for the majority of Istanbullers, as opposed to just a few. This stance will infuriate the radical Turkish left, but they just need to study judo and adopt a progressive community benefits framework where they insist on getting something out of development, as opposed to nothing, which is what is currently happening.”

“Second, this shift towards a community benefits framework will enable planners to focus on making the city more livable, which is its largest problem. The flight of the upwardly mobile middle classes to gated communities on the periphery is akin to suburbanization in the United States a generation ago. The core is hard to live in – too much traffic, terrible pedestrian realms, little access to parks and nature, almost impossible to bike without being killed. Take the Barbaros/Buyukdere corridor, the main boulevard going from Besiktas in the historic center through the burgeoning corporate towers of the Levent and now Maslak. Buyukdere may mean big stream or big river in Turkish, but in Istanbul it means big pedestrian nightmare that tears through the city and leaves dense older neighborhoods isolated from one another. It is a grade-level Cross-Bronx Expressway. People may associate Moses with Hausmann, but they are very different. This is pure Moses in Istanbul. Buyukdere and Tarlabashi Blvd. are just urban highways designed for movement. At least Hausmann built sidewalks. The only chances for leisurely flannerie in Istanbul is on Istiqual Street, which explains why it is so packed and popular, or the new shopping malls. Even walking on the street in bourgeois Bebek means dodging cars in between bites of waffle. The city must begin to extract concessions from the developers to rebuild the public realm in and around these development corridors, ensuring that local residents’ ability to walk to transit, to shopping and to parks and plazas is increased.”

“Third, this emphasis on livability may be the key to providing any sort of political traction to the various forces looking for a new direction for development in Istanbul. Right now, developers are running the show, and transportation planners seem to be operating in a vacuum, building two systems that barely talk to each other and certainly don’t communicate with the street and the neighborhoods. But opposition is tricky – the neighborhoods under threat of eviction are very different from each other and are having a hard time coming together across class and ethnic divides. The opposition to the third bridge is broad but shallow, and it is facing a powerful machine being driven from both Ankara and Istanbul, not to mention Dubai and London. Livability is about the little things – the ability to get where you need to go in less than two hours, the ability not to be killed by a minibus, the ability to get some exercise if you can’t afford the gym. This does not substitute for basic civil rights in a democracy or basic human rights under capitalism, but it is one thing that we all have in common. Poor people’s movements in urban cities ignore the middle classes at their own peril, and this could be one discursive shift that can restructure the redevelopment machine. It may not stop the third bridge, but perhaps it can work to shift ‘regeneration’ policy from an emphasis on buildings to an emphasis on the public realm, accessibility and mobility.”

In response to challenges from more learned colleagues native to Istanbul who actually have PHD’s and have been working on Istanbul’s problems for years – challenges which ranged from the difficulty of doing any of this given the power of capital and a semi-autocratic and highly centralized state to Schatzburg’s stunning naïvete and classic western arrogance – Schatzburg took another sip of his beer and continued talking about sidewalks and how awesome the Metrobus would be if you could get there without feeling like you were going to die.