Transforming buildings, reorienting lives: the desire for gentrification in Istanbul

ABSTRACT

How do the marginalized middle-lower-class residents of a neighborhood yearn for and participate in gentrification? In Istanbul, the low-quality building stock and risk of earthquakes intensifies the need for urban transformation, making it seem inevitable and desirable. This article focuses on the experience of gentrification in the Hasanpaşa neighborhood of Istanbul, using an intersectional lens to discuss how the locals, who cultivate a reorienting agency, give consent and aspire for urban change. A form of aspirational normativity emerges among the locals, driving the positive affect around the ideal and materiality of renewal – exemplified by the transformation of an abandoned power plant into a cultural complex. The case of Hasanpaşa shows that we need to take into account the different starting points, multiple contextual features, and intersecting social positions in order to have a more complete understanding of the landscapes of urban change.

KEYWORDS:

• Gentrification
• urban transformation
• neighborhood
• class
• affect
• Istanbul

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Ebru Soytemel, Kerem Öktem, Ayfer Bartu Candan, Ayse Saktanber, Kristen Biehl, Asli Ikizoglu, and Yagmur Nuhrat for their generous and constructive suggestions. Most of all, I am very grateful to the residents of Hasanpaşa, who were so willing to share their everyday experiences of socio-spatial change.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I conducted additional interviews with a worker at the Kadıköy Municipality, who specializes in planning and zoning, a developer who built two apartments in the neighborhood, and a city employee at the reopened Gazhane Museum in December 2021. All interviews were recorded and transcribed. All names are anonymized.

2 3,675 of the total 3,972 earthquake-prone apartment blocks in Kadıköy were demolished and most of them were reconstructed afterward as of mid-2021 (Baser, 2021). Many old-but-sound structures are rebuilt for more luxurious, smart, and expensive units.

3 See Özbay’s (1999) discussion on Turkish women’s reading of the spatiality of a modern lifestyle via the structure and modeling of the flat.

4 Some locals organized around the idea to transform Gazhane from its ruins into a public space that would serve the neighborhood in 1995. They call themselves the “Gazhane Environmental Volunteers.” Their Twitter account is @GazhaneH. My respondents are not part of this grassroots organization, but they have supported the groups’ demands about the place.