More inclusive than before?: The tale of a historic urban park in Ankara, Turkey

2015-08-01
Akkar Ercan, Zübeyde Müge
Show full item record
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
139
views
0
downloads
In the prevailing literature on contemporary public spaces, two contested sets of arguments become apparent: one depicts the 'end of public space', while the other challenges with this 'end of public space' discourse. Following the debates, one can ask the question of whether there has been any ideally 'public' or 'inclusive' public space ever in cities, or the inclusivity (thereby 'publicness') of public spaces can or may change in time based on a variety of factors. This research, addressing these questions, contributes to this ongoing discussion, first by providing a model of inclusivity for the qualitative assessment of public spaces, and second by using this model to provide an empirical analysis on the largest urban park in the historic city centre of Ankara, namely Genclik Park (GP). After in-depth analysis of the changing inclusivity of GP from its heydays to nowadays regarding four dimensions of 'access', in relation with its design, management, control and use processes, as well as the contextual aspect of the inclusivity exclusivity continuum of public private spaces, it concludes that the 'inclusive' nature of public spaces might change and evolve depending on time dimension, as well as the local and global contexts within which the public space is set and bounded. Although the causes and issues regarding the inclusivity capacity of public spaces are complex that is, 'multiple', 'site-specific' and 'interrelated', the continuous presence of democratic and egalitarian procedural accessibility, which embraces all segments of the public, which gives them the opportunity to raise their voices and opinions about the public spaces, and which deliberation is used as the mechanism to endure a consensual rather than authoritarian style of interaction is a requirement for generating and maintaining inclusive public spaces.
Public space, Urban park, Inclusivity, Accessibility, Genclik Park, Ankara
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/39396
URBAN DESIGN INTERNATIONAL
Department of City and Regional Planning, Article

Suggestions

The humanistic meaning of urban squares: the case of çayyolu urban square project
Zeka, Başak; Ataöv Demirkan, Anlı; Urban Design in City and Regional Planning Department (2011)
Urban public squares, within the context of public spaces, are essential components of cities because they provide spaces for social interaction. This helps sustain the humanization of the society through gathering, lingering and wandering through, and engaging together into various human activities and can make significant contributions to the cultural development of communities. In the last three decades, the concept of public space has been redefined within the context of urban space development leading ...
Transformation from Representational Space to Tolerance Space: The Juxtaposition of Ideal and Real in the Urban Public Area
Basa, İnci (2018-01-01)
This article discusses the concept of tolerance as an essential urban quality within the bounds of public space. The prevalent approach in urban research reveals that public spaces backdrop the level of urbanites' ability and willingness to tolerate different cultural and social clusters. As a further contribution to this observation, this study aims to develop the understanding that public spaces play a significant role in urban tolerance as geographies of encounters rather than serving as neutral settings...
Investigating the morphological aspects of public spaces: the case of Atakum coastal promenade in Samsun
Er, Volkan.; Akkar Ercan, Z. Müge.; Urban Design in City and Regional Planning Department (2019)
The concept of public space is quite extensive topic. It is frequently discussed in urban planning and urban design. This research primarily investigates the concept of publicness of public spaces. In addition, comprehensive analysis studies indicate what are the urban elements that determine and limit this publicness. First, it basically describes what public space is, what roles it has and what kind of stages of change it has undergone. Moreover, by examining the differences between the concepts of space ...
Appropriation and allocation in the (RE) production of public spaces: a survey on three cases from Ankara
Özkan, Selcen Özgül; Bilsel, Fatma Cânâ; Department of Architecture (2010)
Public space is one of the most essential components of urban spaces, as the notion refers to the society and its values. Besides, public spaces provide the society with an opportunity of expression and identification; they have the potential of signification and of orientation of citizens‟ daily life. Public spaces are the urban places which are subject to either spontaneous or intentional transformations. In the present thesis, two developments which can be observed in these processes are examined: „appro...
The political struggle on and at public space : the case of Kızılay Square
İlkay, Yasemin; Aksoy, Şinasi; Department of Urban Policy Planning and Local Governments (2007)
In Turkey, by 1980, a transformation has been observed on both the character of the societal opposition and the meaning, function, and spatial form of public spaces, which were characterized to be essential political spaces of a period. Kızılay Square was ‘the preferred space’ by the opposition during the struggle against Democrat Party in 1960’s; however demonstrations were expelled out of the square by legal regulations and sanctions. On one hand, legally, Kızılay Square could not be the scene of societal...
Citation Formats
Z. M. Akkar Ercan, “More inclusive than before?: The tale of a historic urban park in Ankara, Turkey,” URBAN DESIGN INTERNATIONAL, pp. 195–221, 2015, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/39396.
METU IIS - Integrated Information Service open@metu.edu.tr