Changing Istanbul City Region Dynamics: Re-regulations to Challenge the Consequences of Uneven Development and Inequality

Abstract

In this paper, it is claimed that the dynamics that enabled the emergence of city regions as new places of globalization brought about significant changes and restructuring in these areas in the early years of neo-liberal policies. Subsequently, from the 1990s onwards a new neo-liberalist agenda, in reply to the problems of the early period of globalization, defined new relations and new dynamics for city regions. The aim of this paper, with the help of earlier Istanbul case studies, is to discuss the changes taking place in city regions, including the outcomes of the neo-liberal policies induced by the competitiveness of the 1980s, especially those related to the distribution of welfare and social cohesion, which forced the nation state to reconfigure its neo-liberal project.

Notes

The notion of a city region, however, is not new. In the 1950s, urban scientists, planners and economists used the term to denote the scale of strategic decisions and political administration that extended beyond the previously defined boundaries.

Which competitive assets make Istanbul attractive for foreign firms? The 2005 survey (Türel et al., 2005) provides interesting findings. In this survey, international firms have indicated the quality of communication and technological facilities as the most important factors in the competitive power of Istanbul, while they gave the second important asset as the proximity to potential markets. Besides these two factors, more than half of the respondents defined the availability of qualified labour, low wages and the quality of life as major assets of Istanbul. Furthermore, more than 40% of the respondents believed that several recreation and cultural facilities have played a significant role in their location decisions, besides the large numbers of international fairs organized in Istanbul. The factors indicated above do not change substantially across different fields of activity, although companies in the services sector put more emphasis on the importance of human capital.

The distribution of 405 firms interviewed are as follows: 140 firms are in manufacturing, 4 in mining, 6 in agriculture, 42 communication-transportation, 21 in tourism, 14 energy and the remaining in different service activities.

The changes in the size of the area controlled by IMM are as follows:

• Table

According to Keyder (2005), there is a change from a Gini coefficient of 0.43 in 1984 to 0.58 in 1994, and this is arguably higher now.

The share of population that have less consumption than average.

The interviews were conducted in 2007 and 2008.

Secondly, the new regulations covered education, health and the protection of cultural and natural resources, which meant an increased role for the metropolitan municipalities against central government institutions.

An article is added to the Building Code (3194) indicating that the right to plan and approve these plans for sites the sites that belonged to the public firms under the privastion scheme (According to The Law on Privastisation 4046, 22 November 1994) is transferred from Municipalties to the Prime Ministry Privatisation Agency.