Speaker
Description
Since the 2010s, Urban Mega Projects (UMPs) have become the dominant mode of Istanbul’s spatial development, driving expansion into its northern territories. The clustered scheme of UMPs - including the Northern Marmara Highway, Istanbul Airport, Kanal İstanbul, and New Istanbul - represents not only mega-scale spatial interventions but also an unprecedented transformation in speed, scope, and production methods. These projects have been widely debated and contested in public discourse, as well as in legislative and planning contexts. However, discussions surrounding UMPs remain shaped by deterministic narratives that frame them as either inevitable advancements or outright failures. This binary discourse reduces urban futures to a singular, linear trajectory and, more critically, fails to account for the transitional and evolving conditions currently unfolding in these territories.
Drawing on Lauermann’s (2018) longitudinal perspective of mega-urbanism and Elden’s (2013) conceptualization of territory as a process rather than a fixed entity, the study situates the UMPs within broader territorial logics, demonstrating how these megaprojects inscribe state authority onto landscapes while restructuring socio-spatial relations.
Employing a longue durée perspective, we investigate Istanbul’s mega-urbanization and its temporalities, tracing the interrelations between human activity, natural processes, infrastructures, and urban development through cartographic timelines. These narratives reveal a multi-layered landscape in perpetual flux: from terra incognita and rural peripheries to extractive landscapes shaped by coal and sand mining, from the deposition of moloz (demolition debris) and dolgu (landfill) to the accelerated territorial reconfigurations of today and the speculative geographies of tomorrow.
Utilizing cartographic methods with archival and spatial analysis - drawing on historical maps, planning documents, and geospatial data- mapping becomes both a research tool and a narrative device. Rather than treating maps as static representations of space, this approach embraces their capacity to reveal hidden temporalities, contradictions, and spatial discontinuities within Istanbul’s northern territories and its relationship with the city.
These shifting materialities and boundaries expose the ongoing remaking of northern Istanbul, challenging dominant narratives that present UMPs as linear, irreversible progressions. Instead, territory emerges as a dynamic palimpsest, where past, present, and potential futures are continuously inscribed and erased.
As Throgmorton (1996) argues, planning operates as a form of “persuasive storytelling.” - where narratives guide urban futures and influence policy decisions. By tracing the territorial reconfiguration of Northern Istanbul over extended temporalities, this study constructs an alternative counter-narrative that reveals UMPs as neither monolithic nor inevitable but rather contingent, contested, and embedded within historical cycles of urbanization. Through a longitudinal, narrative-based methodology, it challenges deterministic framings of UMP-led development and advocates for more equitable and ecologically responsive approaches toward the future.
References
Elden, S. (2013) The birth of territory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lauermann, J. (2018) ‘Geographies of mega-urbanization’, Geography Compass, 12(12), p. e12396. doi:10.1111/gec3.12396.
Throgmorton, J. A. (1996) Planning as persuasive storytelling: The rhetorical construction of Chicago’s electric future. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
| Keywords | Urban Mega Projects; Istanbul; North of Istanbul; narratives; territory |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
