Verticalities in comparison: Debates on high-rise construction in Izmir and Istanbul

Anlam Filiz

Urban Studies, 2024, vol. 61, issue 4, 743-757

Abstract: Large-scale high-rise architecture projects have been central to the rise of the construction industry in Turkey in recent years. This vertical escalation, however, has not been received without dissidence. Scholars, activists, journalists and officials with different viewpoints have participated in media debates regarding the reasons and consequences of this transformation. In these discussions, stakeholders have raised various environmental, cultural and ethical concerns that the vertical organisation of cities generate. Focussing on juxtapositions of Izmir and Istanbul in debates on urban verticality in the city of Izmir, Turkey’s third most populated city, the paper examines how such comparisons with Istanbul, where the recent urban neoliberal transformation is experienced most intensely, have been mobilised to oppose vertical expansion. The paper argues that as a result of the recent centralisation of the Turkish economy around construction, the hyper-visibility of skyscrapers and the concentration of the urban transformation generated by the Turkish construction industry in Istanbul, skyscrapers have become materialised symbols of Istanbul’s integration into global capitalism, neoliberal urbanisation, and the difference between Istanbul and other urban centres in Turkey. This example establishes urban verticality as a discursive axis at which urban centres outside of the Global North establish their difference from each other.

Keywords: difference; Global South; Istanbul; Izmir; locality; skyscrapers; vertical expansion; 差异; å ‘å±•ä¸­å›½å®¶; ä¼Šæ–¯å ¦å¸ƒå°”; 伊兹密尔; 地方; 摩天大楼; åž‚ç›´æ‰©å¼ (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00420980231168054 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:61:y:2024:i:4:p:743-757

DOI: 10.1177/00420980231168054

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Urban Studies from Urban Studies Journal Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().