Spaces & Flows: Ninth International Conference on Urban and ExtraUrban Studies

Abstract

Istanbul is undergoing a major neoliberal urban transformation, generating new layers of segregation and inequalities. The “not-yet-fully-transformed” and relatively inclusive historical district of Beyoglu has also been a key target for neoliberal dreams. Based on the ethnographic research on the social and spatial encounters between the locals and the newcomers in Beyoğlu, this paper aims to explore the linkages between urban transformation and changing political economy of the neighborhood on the one hand, and how different human flows changed the everyday life creating different modes of contestation and/or cooperation between the earlier residents and the newcomers (including international migrants and refugees), on the other. As such, the paper ties the macro processes of human flows and changing urban landscape with the socio-spatial dynamics of everyday life and right to the city. Curiously, changing human flows in the city has also created new socio-economic spaces based on a service economy for and by newcomers such as water-piper (narghile) cafes, side by side trendy and hip cafes and clubs. Not surprisingly, these emerging socio-economic spaces have generated uncomfortable encounters and tensions as well as cooperation and adaptation in the neighborhood, revealing that ‘contact’ is often a double-edged sword. We argue that these everyday encounters between the locals and the newcomers and the associated spatial adjustment can provide insights not only for the social cohesion and prospects of living together in Istanbul but also for the nature of urban transformation itself.