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Covid 19 has led to deep inquiries in urbanization management mechanisms. In the city management systematic, there has been a process that compels the establishment of a more accessible city instead of large projects, which are the products of the understanding that sees the city as growth and rent-oriented. This approach, which marks a return to the human scale, necessitated many spatial arrangements. The most important of these is the reunion of people who have been locked in their homes with their neighborhoods that are within "eye reach"; "Social transparency of the neighborhood" has been accepted for both fear and viewing purposes. In Turkey and in the world, municipalities have implemented many innovative and pioneering urban health and social support practices in this process. In this study, the historical context on the subject, today's environment and most importantly, local service, neighborhood unit, neighborhood status, Covid-19 period municipality application examples are discussed. The selection of sample municipalities was made by random method, but pioneering examples from metropolitan city municipalities to provincial and district municipalities, from municipalities at every level, were tried to be evaluated within the article page limit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's participation in the decision‐making and design of urban public spaces is crucial for achieving inclusive cities. International covenants have recognized the importance of participation as a right. Having adhered to these agreements, Turkey is obliged to enable children's participation in all public matters that concern them, including shaping urban spaces. This paper analyses national and local legislation in Turkey and Istanbul to distil how children's right to participate is legislated and institutionalised. It shows that lack of integrated child‐responsive legislation, accounting for children's individuality, and lack of collaboration between national and local governments are the root of the problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children are important actors in the urban areas of Turkey since they make up the largest demographic group. Therefore, the reasons behind their being regarded as 'passive' should be re-examined, in view of the fact that they live and work in, and create and recreate the city. The purpose of this study is to elaborate the children's right to the city concept from two different points of view using liberal and radical approaches within the theoretical framework provided by Marcuse in the right to the city discourse. The reason for choosing Marcuse is that at some points, his arguments meet with both a liberal and radical understanding of the right to the city. Therefore, these two approaches will be compared regarding children's right to the city in Turkey in light of related literature. In the last part of the study, children's right to the city will be discussed from these two perspectives with the particular case of street children derived from findings in the literature. It is revealed that while there are significant developments in Turkey at local and international level in terms of children's right to the city and street children, there is still a need for a strengths-based perspective which positions children as active agents making decisions about their own lives and formation of urban space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The neighbourhood forums in Ankara began to convene during the Gezi protests in 2013 and lasted about three years. The activities of Ankara Gezi forums are urban commoning practices in terms of a new set of demands and methods. This paper conceptualises urban commoning practices as method, content, and demand. This framework offers an understanding of urban commoning that is not based on monetary transaction, but focuses on seeing commoning as a social process. Commoning is not ahistorical, rather it is engaged with the historical political potential of urban spaces. Commoning as method discusses organising in commons, commoning as content focuses on the form and meaning of political action, and commoning as demand emphasises the discursive use of right to the city. The case selection of this research enables us to reflect on how urban commoning is experienced in a city under less financial investment pressure, but at the centre of national‐level politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper examines how the housing problem of the Roma people, living already under severe socio-spatial circumstances, has been exacerbated by counterurbanisation over recent decades in the resort town of Urla, İzmir. Based on empirical socio-spatial research adopting methodological pluralism integrating qualitative and quantitative research techniques, the study uses in-depth interviews and secondary data (e.g., real-estate web data, official statistics, and local media) as well as spatial analysis of satellite images. We limited our study to the proximity of the town center of Urla, considering the Roma community's 'right to the city', ensuring their right not to be exiled to the spaces of discrimination, and not to be exempted from their right to appear and co-exist in the town center. As Urla became a prominent and attractive destination of counterurbanisation in Turkey, its growth was intensified by high-end housing production. Coming to 2000s, its urban-rural texture remained, at least physically, 'rural', but it had undergone significant transformation. And while this recent higher-end development accompanied by counterurbanisation is sanctioned by local authorities, the public and property owners, it leaves no room for the Roma people to find decent housing. An inquiry on the housing problem of the Roma people in Urla in relation to counterurbanisation and accompanying housing production contributes to understanding the dialectics between deregulated housing market, commodification and uneven distribution of treasury lands, neoliberal regulations, and fragmented development plans implemented in highly "path-dependent" ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gezi movement was initiated by a group of young people originating from different political and ideological backgrounds, who were in conflict with established élites. These active citizens most often approach problems from the grassroots level. They may belong to a political party, social movement, or some other active association involved in promoting an ideology of change. They are not necessarily left or right, but tend to be in the opposition and the more radical of each political persuasion. They are often social reformers of an established party, grassroots organisers of any political position, or radical revolutionaries with an activist orientation. They believe that many things can be done altruistically for 'the people' or for 'the country'. The Gezi Park Protests announced the formation of new collective movements denouncing the precariousness of individual life and the fragmentation of social life. It also brought about new avenues for the reconstruction of a social life free from the control of neoliberal and financial speculation, affirming the human dignity of individuals aiming at their subjective assertion in the context of a new democracy. Based on such premises, the Introduction will introduce the basic assumptions of this issue as well as the content of each article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to explore the significance of the interaction between urban space and non-urban space. Urban transformation, mega projects and their effects on urban space under the epoch of neoliberal practices have been on the agenda of social sciences for some time; nonetheless a holistic approach which comprises both urban space and non-urban space, and relation between the two is still missing in many pieces of urban studies. Thus, article will underline the importance of the interaction between urban and non-urban areas in the discussion of "right to the city". Istanbul, transformation of the city and impact of this transformation will get special emphasis. The first part of the article will lay theoretical foundations by concentrating on Lefebvre's formulations on space. Then the article turns its attention to literature of urban studies to show how non-urban space has been neglected. Using the terminology of Lefebvre, concepts of "implosion" and "explosion" will also be discussed to shed a light on extended urbanization of Istanbul. The second part of the article will concentrate on the how mechanisms of implosion and explosion work for Istanbul. Here in this part, Northern Forests of Istanbul and mega projects will get special attention to discuss the relation between urbanization and ecological destruction. The final part of the article will revisit the concept of right to the city, underlining the urgent need to have an ecological glance in the urban studies to fully understand the impact of urbanization in the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influx of hundreds of thousands of people from Syria to Turkey, especially into major cities such as İstanbul, together with the Turkish government's policies towards Syrian refugees, has led to various changes in urban spaces. This article has a twofold objective: it examines and discusses the everyday lives of these refugees with regards to the processes and mechanisms of their exclusion and inclusion in İstanbul, while employing a multiscalar analysis of migration in terms of combining nation-state policies of migration, citizenship, space, and the concept of the "right to the city." Relying upon interviews and participant observation in the Kanarya and Bayramtepe neighborhoods of İstanbul between 2011 and 2015, I outline the ways in which Syrian Kurdish refugees have been actively transforming İstanbul's peripheries through their interactions with the Kurds who were forcibly displaced from their rural homes in southeastern Turkey in the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows how the transformation of Istanbul's entertainment industry and of Beyoğlu, Istanbul's oldest, largest and the most diverse entertainment district, represents and reproduces spatial and economic divisions in the city. We argue that these differences also become compounded and intertwined with distinctions in consumption and taste. Taking a simultaneous look at the spatial, economic and symbolic transformations of the entertainment industry enables us to understand how and why these intense divisions emerge, and what kind of contestations, rationalizations and resistance strategies are at work in this transformation. A major contribution of this article is to document and discuss the political economy of the process of urban transformation in the city through the lens of the entertainment industry, providing an interesting case of 'neoliberalism on the ground'. Examining the neoliberalization of nightlife in a relatively understudied context, Istanbul, also reveals that its segmentation and spatial inequality are not just determined by political economy but are also constitutive of it. By adding the concept of 'image consumption' and taste distinctions into the analysis, the article also uncovers the symbolic nature of the ongoing transformations. Finally, exploring Beyoğlu as a district in transition with persistent contestations contributes, in turn, to the right to the city debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalization is generating new forms of citizenship that often go beyond the institutional perception of social identity. These new forms of citizenship are developed in a scalable way to a greater extent than rights and obligations, and are entirely managed by the citizens themselves. To demonstrate empirical support for this issue, the case of minority communities in Turkey constitutes one of the most relevant examples, since citizenship in this country has long been associated with an idea of political loyalty and total allegiance to the nation-state. The main purpose of this article is to show how urban space and urban protest allow minorities to find alternative forms of expression for their collective identity, and to create a new understanding of citizenship beyond the classical definition, being based instead on institutional representation. The aim of this research is to examine the process of urban transformation in Istanbul, how this phenomenon shapes the structure of cities and how it gives rise to social resistance and protest, especially in neighborhoods housing minority communities. In this context, the article focuses on planning movements in Turkey through a comparative study of two urban planning projects and the citizens' protests against them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The spark that drew Istanbul into a fire of protest and uprising was initially set off by a modest ‘occupy style’ peaceful resistance, staged against the destruction of an historically public park, an urban commons, in order to make way for yet another shopping mall in Istanbul. Following explicit police violence against the protestors, who were openly discredited by the government for being a few looters, the urban centers of Turkey saw a full-fledged uprising, gathering considerable international steam as well. Analyzing the path of this social mobilization flowing from Gezi Park to larger geographical scales of the urban, the national, and beyond, this article situates the urban uprisings in Turkey in the conceptual background of the right to the city, coined by Henri Lefebvre at the time of Parisian uprisings in 1968. The article further argues in the end that, if this revolutionary energy is to be channeled into a lasting social transformation, the Kurdish movement and the labor movement—historically, the two main motors of Turkey's democratization—should catch up with the protestors on the ground. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores and theorizes the ways in which urban space and political contestations are mapped onto each other. The ethnography illustrates the multifaceted transformations in a notoriously secularist neighborhood of İstanbul, Teşvikiye, as it first turns into a high-consumption locality in the post-1980s, then into a high-conflict urban space in the new millennium on the arrival of Muslim high-spenders, particularly headscarved women. Aiming to fill the gap left by the absence of spatial analysis from political science and political sociology, I argue that the urban neighborhood becomes central for political contestation when both government and opposition fail to protect and secure liberties and rights. Now that devout Muslims are integrated into highly contested urban sites and share bourgeois lifestyles, ordinary people act in defense of their 'sphere' of freedom and privacy. This new territoriality is largely symptomatic of increasing fears of losing freedom, privacy and social status. This spatial defensiveness is reinforced by people's decreasing trust in, and increasing demands from, the state for the protection and security of their rights and liberties. My overarching argument is that exclusive attention to the bipolar clash between devout Muslims and secularists under the rubric of 'neighborhood wars' obscures multipolar conflicts around the discontents stemming from authoritarianism and democratization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late 1990s, the 'urban citizenship' literature has accentuated the burgeoning potential of the city as host to more democratic interpretations of citizenship. A more recent literature highlighted the 'local trap' in such assumptions, arguing that the local cannot exist outside of neoliberalization. This article examines some of the recent institutional transformations in Istanbul's local government and seeks to understand where these might be situated in this discussion. Three institutions dealing with disability are scrutinized with regard to their power dynamics, discourses and practices. The argument is that, although superficially such developments seem to represent some of the tendencies highlighted by the urban citizenship literature (in terms of their scale, timing and appeal to a group previously excluded from modern citizenship), deeper analysis shows that these often promote charity- rather than rights-based approaches. This is because the push factors in the emergence of these institutions are not the urban struggles on the part of the disability community, but rather the ruling party's populism, the impact of supranational agencies and the demands of non-disabled residents at district level. Each of the three institutions examined is shaped primarily by one factor, leading to differing degrees of charity- and rights-based practices. Arguments concerning the prospects of more democratic interpretations of citizenship at local level need to consider experiences in diverse settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]