The Politics of Greening the City
The Case of the Bostan of Kuzguncuk, Istanbul
in Nature and CultureAll currencies in US Dollar
Abstract
The neighborhood of Kuzguncuk in Istanbul has been the theater of a 20-year struggle between the authorities and the local population concerning a green area present in the center of the district. This struggle was interesting as it concerned visions of green areas and more globally of society. The inhabitants wanted to have an open green and social area, whereas the centralized authority wanted to use this land for a profitable building project, without any consultation of the neighborhood. In 2015, a park was inaugurated on this land, the result of a compromise between political authorities and inhabitants of Kuzguncuk. Because of this compromise, this is a unique case, and it will be interesting to understand how different visions of green areas and societal values brought about a project such as that of Kuzguncuk.
Contributor Notes
Alice Genoud has a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s degree in geography at the University of Lausanne. She did an internship in the French Institute for Anatolian Studies in Istanbul in 2016, in order to carry out her master’s thesis, where she studied the question of urban agriculture. She had worked in the Swiss association equiterre, which is active in projects concerning sustainable development, principally to do with the question of urban gardens in Switzerland and is now working in the Swiss association transport and environment, which promotes sustainable mobility. E-mail: alicegenoud@hotmail.com