An Evaluation of Urban Dichotomies in the Third World Metropolis Istanbul

Today’s third world metropolis can be described as a segmented, fragmented collage city, where its texture consists of many successions of social and spatial dualisms. These dualisms (dichotomies) realize in the form of city in city (Ungers, 1997), in other words city in-between deployments, totally an anarchical (not-hierarchical), postmodern morphology, which is contemporarily composed by divided, disrupted, crystallized public spaces – in-betweens. Istanbul as a “third world” metropolis is a dynamic open system, where complex, multiple economical, social and physical conditions are overlapped. Still the city is a focus point of social and spatial dichotomies and their genuine contradictions particularly in the last thirty years. This “city” has immediate varieties of expectations from the urban transformation design projects with regard to the authenticities and identities its typical dichotomies. In this sense, the basic principles of urban transformation strategies should be concepted on an equal, productive and common urban public space, which enables the redefinition / reconstruction / reorganization of the in-between regions between the conflicted “ruined and peak” zones and in the crystallized third world metropolis Istanbul. First of all, this paper aims to discuss comparative the concept “the third world metropolis” and analyze its social and spatial aspects, which also endures fragmentation in Istanbul. Accordingly the contemporary transformation process of Istanbul from the Ottoman Empire capital to the industrial modern republic city and eventually to the post-modern (collage) third world metropolis of multi-layered social and physical conditions and their dichotomies, their contradicted situations and their in-between spaces in Istanbul will be evaluated. The underlying reasons of these contradictions and eventual outcome of the peak and the ruined zones in Istanbul and their border district’s / in-between spatial typologies will be classified. In the conclusion, this paper argues about the future of the city Istanbul accordingly and makes suggestions about the basic principles of urban transformation strategies regarding the equal, productive and common urban public space, which enables the redefinition / reconstruction / reorganization of the in-between regions by integrating the conflicted “ruined and peak” zones and unification of the crystallized collage third world metropolis Istanbul.