Modernizing a City of Migrants

The Hidden Informal World of Tarlabaşı

Master thesis (2023)

Authors

R. Weissenburger Architecture and the Built Environment

Contributors

F. Geerts Theory, Territories & Transitions - Architecture and the Built Environment (mentor)
O.R.G. Rommens Theory, Territories & Transitions - Architecture and the Built Environment (graduation committee member)
G. Koskamp Architectural Technology - Architecture and the Built Environment (graduation committee member)
Faculty
Architecture and the Built Environment, Architecture and the Built Environment
Copyright: © 2023 Ron Weissenburger
More Info
expand_more

Published Date

26-06-2023

Language

English

Reuse Rights

Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.

Faculty

Architecture and the Built Environment

Abstract

The focus of this thesis is on the phenomenon of the informal settlement and its
informal economy. The location of the graduation project called Tarlabası is an informal settlement in the middle of the city centre of Istanbul. The neighbourhood has been a shelter for the poor, refugees and minorities for generations. The district functions as its own hidden and self-regulating world.
This has created an informal economy that is inextricably linked to the rest of Istanbul, such as the waste/recycling industry. It cannot exist without the informal branch of waste pickers, who are responsible for 80% of recycling in Turkey. The unique district of Tarlabası is seen as bad and criminal by
the authoritarian neoliberal city planners. Therefore, the neighbourhood has already been hit by gentrification processes, ignoring the unique characteristics and social roots of this neighbourhood. Urban renewal or gentrification or however you want to name it, is seen as a necessary tool to erase certain parts of social and physical identities created in the last 50 years via programs of demolition and resettlement. Residents are evicted or given unfair compensation to leave their homes or workplaces. As a result, the gentrification processes result in a displacement of the poor, driving them away from the city centre and their informal work. In 2009, at least one million residents in Istanbul were under threat of forced eviction due to the Urban Transformation Project. The unique characteristics, such as creativity, flexibility, intrinsic value and self-regulation are ignored by the top-down view of modernization, leading to generic neighbourhoods without economic flexibility and with social segregation, but also resulting in a further decline of informal settlements. This thesis aims to take a critical look at the current neoliberalist modernization processes of
urban areas around the world through the case of Istanbul. Urban informality is receiving more and more attention in the literature, but there is still a lot of uncertainty about how we can deal with this phenomenon in urban design and architecture.