- The understanding of Beijing cultural spaces   click here to open paper content882 kb
by    Zongpei, Gu | bessiegu@qq.com   click here to send an email to the auther(s) of this paper
Short Outline
Protecting and re-using cultural spaces is one of the most important issues
during Beijing’s development. A comprehensive understanding of the present situation of cultural spaces in Beijing is examined by mapping the spatial distribution of Beijing’s cultural resources. More importantly, downfalls behind the current situation in Beijing are analyzed.
Abstract
Urban renewal is among the priorities of urban agenda in Istanbul
considering the large amount of squatter areas, disaster-vulnarable
existing building stock, and historic building stock. Eventhough urban
renewal is not a new phenomenon in Turkey, 1999 Marmara Earthquakes have
played a major role in changing the emphasis from quantity to quality as a
way to resolve the urbanisation perception by focusing on what already
exists. New laws and regulations, new planning tools and methodologies and
new organisation forms have followed the earthquakes. The private sector
has valorised this process through the large-scale property-led renewal
schemes in the creation of gated housing estates and in the transformation
of squatter areas and historic inner-city neighbourhoods into the giant
construction zones of economic rant and land speculation. Infact, the paper
claims that the large-scale property-led renewal schemes, which have been
employed as an evolving model in resolving the urbanisation problem, are
turned into the instruments of “urbicide” in Istanbul as a political
“evolving” model of urban destruction. The concerns arising out of this
change of emphasis encompass conflicts between theory and practice, as well
as conflicts between production and consumption, marketing and planning,
authenticity and diversity, users and owners, process and action, and
opportunities and threats.

Within this scope, by constructing an urban renewal framework through the
exploration of Law on the Protection and the Revitalisation of Deteriorated
Historical and Cultural Immovable Assets (2005) and Law on the
Transformation of Areas under Disaster Risk (2012), the paper intents to
discuss the evolving and declining urbanisation patterns in Istanbul by
relating them with up-to-date political, economic, technological and socio-
economic inferences. Considerable emphasis is placed on the use of examples
in Historic Peninsula to illustrate and critically analyze meanings,
inputs, outputs and impacts. The paper concludes by addressing in what ways
the planning as a profession can manage these evolving and declining models
in resolving contradictions stemming from the dichotomy of urbanisation and
urbicide in Istanbul.
Keywords
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