urbanismo

The urbanization process in modern Turkey has been marked by the expansion of cities from their historical core to the periphery, a phenomenon largely driven by internal migration from rural to urban areas in the mid-twentieth century. This process was characterized by the construction of houses, commonly referred to as gecekondu, which were built by immigrants using their own financial resources and labor. Gecekondu not only served as a means of shelter but also contributed to the creation of a unique spatial subculture that persists to this day.As urbanization progressed and gecekondu gave way to apartment buildings, the traces of this subculture could be observed in details such as spatial economy, functional preferences, and construction materials. One notable example of such materials is PVC, commonly known as “Pimapen” in Turkish, which has left an indelible mark on the country’s built environment. Pimapen is widely used due to its affordability, accessibility, and flexibility in...

After all, rethinking about everyday life practices happening on common spheres in context of space-place was very challenging. The hidden values that strictly embedded in place is not seen without a purposely structured distance between observer and event. That kind of distant-alienation is instantaneous and fading by time until next recall. Now, I am going to try to explain some of my thoughts that appear based on intuition about space practices in Turkey. Well, there is 2 topics that I would like to discuss about: - Generally, conceptualization processes praxis on academia and its power to explain lived world. - Personnel public place experiences/observations and lessons-learned from *** We may assume that each concept is not strong enough when it is possible to use one instead of the other. It is a general argument but I am particularly talking about space-place dichotomy. After a class I kept reading on this division but unfortunately I have not been getting clear and hopefull...

What I will write on this essay may seem a little dispersed. I hope I can do it without much scatter. I have always been interested in contemporary philosophy and therefore I was familiar with the concept of the phenomenological perspective , but it made me realize that I did not know anything about its application in the social sciences. I am happy that the possibility has appear to base my knowledge on a method. In order to explain “things” it is useful to abstract them from the meaning additions to which they are interbedded. I will read more about this. I remember that I quietly whisper to myself as “what a waste of energy and time” when someone mentioned about the Kula Ring case in the first time for me. When I looked from the world of meaning I was a part of, I underestimated their compeller efforts for worthless objects (seashells, etc.). However, when I look now, the metaphysical essence that I see in the sources of our own values is actually not that different from that of the...

I would like to share my thoughts and local observations about the relationship between the use of space and the body, around the concept of habitus. Sports as a concept refers to a broader scope than the sporting activity during an exercise. First of all, the work of an average person who is not professionally interested in sports determines whether she/he will do sports or what kind of sport she/he will prefer to do. The acquired knowledge about how the local residents will welcome the occurrence of such a bodily activity is the stage zero, which affects whether the activity itself appears or not. This zeroth stage may have never existed to cause a negative motivation, or it may be fade enough out to be stretched by individual efforts, or It may also be too rigid to not consider the issue itself as a possibility. After this zeroth stage, the meaningfulness of the activity itself is problematized in the first stage. For someone who works in a job that requires intense physical labor, ...

 The sounds of music rising from modified jalopy cars, as you walk through the old slums, is dramatically changed over the years. Even in my own personal history, I witnessed a noticeable differentiation. When I was in middle school, I was working as an ironer in a garment workshop. There was always an arabesque music in background that cannot be suppressed with the overlock and sewing machines and the high-pitched sound of the iron-boiler. While starting the day amid the smells of dark-brewed tea, cigarettes and chemical textile materials is something that absorbs enough life energy, both the melody and the words of the music playing in the background would push people into a deep pessimism. When I left the workshop at the end of the day and breathed the fresh air, I felt like I was born again. While I was sleeping at night, the sounds I had heard all day hung in my ears as a hum. When I talked to one of my friend with whom I was working at that time, he said that the music was go...

The use of loudspeakers placed on mosque minarets to amplify the call to prayer in Turkish cities has led to debates about their place in urban life, mostly centered around aesthetic concerns. However, it can be argued that loudspeakers, which have been part of the public life of Muslim-majority society since the 1930s, represent more than an aesthetic issue. Structural (historical and cultural) barriers have blurred the public discourse on the issue in Turkey, particularly the connection between the use of loudspeakers and social transformations. This phenomenon, which has received little attention in the academic literature, will be analyzed through the experiences of Turkey and Singapore in order to provide a framework for future research and explore the origins of the ongoing debate. *** In recent years, I have seen many people around me complaining about the loudspeaker broadcast of the call to prayer from mosques near their homes for different reasons. In addition to comments tha...