(Re)production and appropriation of open public spaces: representational moments for urban green in Ankara

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2016
İlkay, Yasemin
Urban green areas have a two-folded appropriation: as public spaces, they are open to anyone since they are public property; they are perceived, and experienced by citizens. Besides, they are regulated through official decisions by state institutions. This research examines the gap between ‘perceived’ and ‘conceived’ spatial arguments as a constitutive dimension of spatial appropriation, since parks are reproduced and appropriated as ‘representational spaces’. The main research question is: how the moments of provision and appropriation of urban green areas reveal different modes of representational spaces in Ankara. This question is analysed within three sub-questions: (1) macro analysis focuses on how urban green areas differentiate in Ankara; (2) meso-analysis questions how reproduction and appropriation of urban parks differentiate at district scale in relation with representational policies; (3) micro analysis examines how representational struggles influence the form and rhythm of spatial appropriation at selected two neighbourhood parks (Ahmed Arif and Gökçek Parks). Examinations are based on site observations between 2009 and 2015, reports of municipal councils, web sites of municipalities, legal texts, in-depth interviews, personal mappings. Three modes of urban green were explored as: (1) ‘a policy instrument’ attached to housing development and urban transformation projects; (2) ‘a context of policy’ shifted to a fragmentation and decrease in urban green quality; and (3) ‘a site of policy’ highlighted the representational dimension of urban green, all of which demonstrated the shift in definition of urban green areas from a natural entity to a public entity attached to political, economic, and technical phenomena.

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Citation Formats
Y. İlkay, “(Re)production and appropriation of open public spaces: representational moments for urban green in Ankara,” Ph.D. - Doctoral Program, Middle East Technical University, 2016.