Locating a liminal inner-city neighbourhood in relation to the metropolis: The case of Damlacık, Izmir

Date

2026-8-28

Author

Şakar, Misya Yaprak

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Urban marginality has traditionally been associated with peripheral locations, socio- economic deprivation and spatial exclusion. Yet, a careful scrutiny of cities demonstrates that marginality can also emerge in very central urban spaces. Being physically close to the city center does not mean having equal access to urban resources, public investment, institutional recognition or participation in the processes that produce urban space. In this regard, urban marginality can be understood as a dynamic state, built through the interaction of socio-economic, political-economic and spatial processes. Rapid urbanization, uneven development, changing planning practices and selective urban transformation have shaped the differentiated development of urban neighborhoods within the framework of Türkiye. These processes allow some centrally located neighborhoods to get caught between integration and exclusion, between transformation and neglect, between visibility and invisibility. The idea of urban liminality offers a way of thinking about this in-between state. In this regard, this thesis investigates the production and reproduction of urban marginality through the case of Damlacık, a historically central neighborhood of Izmir. Damlacık has been neglected for a long time, fragmented interventions and unequal integration to urban transformation processes despite its proximity to the city center and major urban investments. The thesis addresses this condition through an integrated theoretical framework, inspired by the Chicago School, Marxist urban theory and Radical Weberian perspectives, interlacing questions of spatial inequality, uneven urban development, governance, territorial stigmatization and everyday social boundaries. This thesis argues that the marginality of Damlacık is not due to a centre-periphery distinction, but rather it is a product of the interaction of selective urban transformation, institutional practices, symbolic exclusion and everyday relations within the neighborhood. One of the major contributions of this thesis is its argument that the production and circulation of discourses contributing to the exclusion and stigmatisation of Damlacık are not confined to the media, the urban middle classes, or dominant institutions. Rather, these representations of Damlacık are also accepted and reproduced by some of the neighbourhood‘s own residents. In employing such exclusionary and stigmatising discourses, these residents tend to position themselves outside the categories being condemned, attributing the problems that supposedly justify these representations to more vulnerable groups, particularly migrants and refugees. In doing so, they portray themselves not as part of the ‘problematic’ population associated with Damlacık, but as victims of the very processes of decline, disorder, and marginalisation through which the neighbourhood is represented.

Subject Keywords

Urban marginality, Urban liminality, Territorial stigma, Uneven urban development

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/120602

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis