Istanblue Space

Abstract

Urban blue space is increasingly used to refer to an urban waterbody and its waterfront, implying that the waterfront should be a shared public space. Unsurprisingly, increasing competition over the benefits of urban blue space has resulted in issues of justice. While spatial justice is rapidly becoming one of the main planning goals in the global North, in the global South, where central states are often pursuing neoliberal agendas to keep up with developed countries, empirical studies remain few. This thesis evaluates urban blue space regeneration from a spatial justice perspective in Istanbul, a typical example of such a context. An evaluative spatial justice framework is applied to the policy plans for ‘Haliç Marina and Complex Project’, a recent regeneration initiative and hot discussion topic in local and national politics. Using interviews, site observations, and two local Masterplans, a qualitative content analysis (QCA) shows that the plan prioritizes commercial development before spatial justice. The plan seems to be an iteration of developmentalist politics of the national government, and so Istanbul’s blue space is subject to the will of a powerful, entrepreneurial government. While this poses many challenges to spatial justice, a strong resistance movement and a slowly changing political climate stem hopeful. Future studies should extent the empirical database to more different contexts, to identify how the transition from profit-based regeneration towards spatial justice can be achieved.