URBAN SPACES
Ancient land, modern challenges
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The infrastructural challenges facing Istanbul are uncannily similar to those in big Indian cities. GUNVANTHI BALARAM
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“The gulf between Istanbul’s rich and its poor is wider than ever before,” says urban planner Omur Barkul
Photos: EPA/KERIM OKTEN
Streamline urban planning: Vintage schoolhouse inFener-Balat restored by EU.
FOR all the hype about Istanbul rapidly metamorphosing into a slick European Union city, it is an edgy Eurasian metropolis marked by ghettos of both types — prosperous pockets of surging westernity and decrepit districts of growing conservatism
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I delved into the innards of Istanbul three times in the last 18 months. During those fortnight-long stays, I not only soaked in the mystique of the megapolis but also attended art events, architecture seminars, roamed obscure, run-down neighbourhoods as well as swanky new ones and interviewed Turkish architects, planners, artists and activists about Istanbul’s changes and challenges. Each time, I could not help but be struck by the sharp contrasts and tensions in this fabled city and by the uncanny similarity of its infrastructural challenges to those of Indian cities such as Mumbai.
World of difference
“Istanbul is a great city but a chaotic place,” Prof Ipek Akpinar, head of architecture at the Istanbul Technical University, said on my first visit. Her words brought to mind our own Charles Correa, who has often proclaimed that “Mumbai is a great city but a terrible place.” According to Akpinar, “Istanbul, more and more, is a city of psychological and physical divides. If its governors and planners don’t watch out, they might find it on the road to Sao Paolo.” I soon saw what the lady meant.
Exploring the city with a couple of local architect/activist-friends, I found a world of difference between the city’s old blue-collar districts of Zeytinburnu and Sultanbeyli and new white-collar districts of Levent and Buyukdere Avenue. Many of the houses and workshops in the former are languishing, while more and more New Age skyscrapers are springing up in the other two. Levent is the corporate abode of the “White Turks”, Akpinar’s nickname for the local pinstriped workforce. Buyukdere, where old warehouses are giving way to new towers, is reminiscent of Mumbai’s erstwhile mill district.
Sultanbeyli is as congested as Dharavi and as politically charged. Housing as it does thousands of unemployed Kurdish refugees and impoverished new settlers from Eastern Anatolian and Black Sea villages, the district has its share of slumlords, factional leaders and scuffles. Zeytinburnu is rather better organised and a bit less squalid, but its residents are mostly as conservative. With a population density of 12,837 individuals per sq km and 5,00,000 new migrants coming in every year, such working-class districts and shanty towns house 60 per cent of Istanbul’s 12 million people; and, civic problems abound.
In a creaky, gloomy tenement in Zeytinburnu, Salem Orkuk, a half Albanian-half Turkish carpet seller from the Grand Bazaar, and his neighbours complained bitterly about the lack of civic amenities and open spaces in Istanbul. Like Mumbai, Istanbul offers next-to-nil open space to its 12 million residents: 1.1 sq m per person on the European side and 1.2 sq m on the Asian side. Salem and his neighbours need to often buy drums of drinking water in the summer and cannot afford heating in the winter.
Contrast this with the lifestyle of the Istanbullus shopping at the trendy boutiques and dining at the glamorous bistros of Nisantasi or Istiklal Caddesi, the heart of hip Istanbul. Or indeed with that of the new owners of the old yalis of the Ottoman pashas, the mansions lining and overlooking the Bosphorus (reclaimed in recent times by a new generation of wealthy Istanbullus). Along with such traditional expatriate enclaves as Bebek, the newcomers have transformed this once-sleepy stretch into a fashionable haven of waterfront cafes, fancy villas and gated communities with swanky new three-storey apartment houses designed by leading Turkish architects such as Han Tumertekin. Private boats churn back and forth between the ferries and freighters, and champagne parties are periodically hosted in the new nightclubs, out on the promenades, and on the terraces of the old yalis.
“The gulf between Istanbul’s rich and its poor is wider than ever before,” says urban planner Omur Barkul, “and it will continue to widen because the development of new, up-market business and residential districts is taking precedence over the dire housing and infrastructural needs of the city’s bursting new shanty-towns and crumbling old lower-class areas.”
The Dubai Investment Group has signed a five billion-dollar deal with the Greater Istanbul Municipality for real estate development in the city but the ordinary people have no stake in it because the projects are confined to affluent districts such as Levent, Bebek, Buyukdere and Cihangir (the hot favourite of expatriates). These glitzy projects are being expedited to meet the criteria for Turkey’s membership to the EU, “which would be fine if the other side were also being looked after, but the shanty towns are neither on the investors’ map, nor on the government’s,” Barkul said. “There could be a flashpoint soon because half the city’s populace is under the age of 35 and many of these young people are hungry for jobs and for better living conditions.”
But experts such as Barkul and Akpinar and ordinary Istanbullus such as Salem see a ray of hope in the city’s current mayor, Kadir Topbas, a practising architect. One of the first things he did was to set up a special unit of 400 architects and planners and engineers to streamline urban planning. Along with the national government, this unit has already documented the problem areas and succeeded in obtaining grants from the EU and the UN for some damage control and development projects.
Levent in Istanbul.
It wasn’t possible to meet the mayor, a man on the move, but his information officer was most helpful. One of their major projects is to rebuild the endangered 1970s’ five-storey houses in Zeytinburnu, an earthquake-prone district, and the EU has given a substantial grant for its implementation. The plan is to provide the residents with alternative housing and rebuild structures that are neither earthquake-proof nor structurally sound, he said.
Widespread problem
The Zeytinburnu project is a drop in the Marmara, given that 98 per cent of the population lives in earthquake-prone zones and sub-standard housing is a widespread problem. Nearly 80 per cent of the 850,000 buildings in Istanbul are not built up to established earthquake-safe codes, and sub-standard construction practices in Turkey were decidedly the main cause of the 20,000 deaths suffered in the 1999 Izmir earthquake.
“Sub-standard housing is a huge problem, and we require thorough planning and a vast budget to be able to address it effectively,” said the bureaucrat. “We intend to take it one step at a time. Important first steps are to stop the building of additional sub-standard construction, completely assess the current building stock, retrofit and decrease the existing risks, and to transfer risks through adequate insurance programmes.”
A controversial problem is what to do with the structures that are deemed unsuitable for retrofit and their residents, he added. “Currently, only those with financial means can afford the new, earthquake-resistant high-rises and gated communities being built outside of the city core and invading the natural forest areas. The city government is, therefore, constantly tapping international organisations and local corporates for grants.”
Though Istanbul’s shanty towns have yet to find benefactors — or even intrepid developers a la Mukesh Mehta of the grandiose Dharavi Upgradation Scheme — a few precincts in its long-neglected historical peninsula have found sponsors in the Unesco, EU, World Bank and heritage-minded multi-nationals, the officer revealed. The Fatih municipality — the Chiara Church, the Patriarchate, the Armenian Church and an old synagogue are located here — has prepared a blueprint for the conservation of local monuments and for the upgradation of some streets. Within a year, several houses immediately around Chiara had been restored with the help of foreign sponsors. Some streets and structures in its antique precincts of Balat, Fener and Zeyrek are in the process of getting a face-lift with EU funding.
Meanwhile, Fatih and some other vintage boroughs have launched campaigns to spread heritage awareness and inspire locals to launch community initiatives to help clear the chaos that marks Istanbul. Their efforts, according to Akpinar, have succeeded in firing many students and young working people. “Istanbul might be marked by chaos,” Akpinar remarked. “But there’s also a chaotic dynamism or synergy in the city. We need to tap into this to achieve positive results. The next 15 years are going to be crucial. Wish this city luck!”
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