Date

2015

Author

Ateş, Burcu

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The rise of industrial capitalism in 19th century brought pressures of mechanisation, privatisation and urbanisation, which triggered the fall of public life. Therefore, under such pressures, notion of public and, accordingly, perception over concept of publicness and public spaces have changed. Along with that change, ‘space’ has been commodified through being reduced into a physical entity, where merely technocrats are capable of producing it. Thus, individuals have been excluded from processes of production of public spaces and passivised by means of being encouraged to be spectators of their lives. However, against technocratic and fragmented approaches on production of space, alternative theories and practices spring up which adopt relational and unitary approaches towards production of space. Inspired from them, the concept of ‘spatial impromptu’ is suggested within scope of this thesis. This concept is basically a manifestation towards initiating possibility of social, political, cultural and ecological production of public spaces within flow of everyday life, where inhabitants are vi thought to be proactive throughout the whole process. Spatial impromptu, therefore, is considered as an attempt to evoke ‘another publicness’ for ‘another public space’. Thus, this study aims to query how inhabitants reclaim public spaces through manifesting a new publicness. Along with this aim, the study analyses practice of guerrilla gardening as a spatial impromptu through appropriation, re-definition and reclamation of public spaces by inhabitants. Conducting in depth analysis on guerrilla gardening, a relational approach is developed to seek multiple relations between gardeners, inhabitants, city, authorities and nature. Thus, this relational analysis provides developing final implications of the study, where Guerrilla Gardening is addressed for appearance of new public spaces and regeneration of issues on ‘right to the city’ and ‘town - country dichotomy’.

Subject Keywords

Urban parks., Public spaces., Urban gardens., Urban gardening., Urban ecology (Sociology).

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12619442/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/25155

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis