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Project

Staging the past - postmodern public space in Brussels and Istanbul.

This dissertation proposes to apply Henri Lefebvres approach of the production of space to the analysis of public space. A thus historically informed socio-economic analysis of public space does prevent research from falling into the trap of orientalism, rehearsing only the age-old argument that public space in the so-called Orient did not exist due to a lack of democracy, the
lack of women moving in public space, the dominance of Islam and indeed the mere physical lack of the square. A historical discourse analysis of the term meydan (square) and publicspace in Istanbul between 1830-2000 uncovered the genealogy of this knowledge. The comparison with Brussels (a city where nobody would question the existence of public space) in the same period and with relatively similar material, showed not only that the discourse about public space in
the two cities followed similar logics and were influenced by similar models, it also helped to single out their characteristics. The emergence of private ownership of urban land during the nineteenth century, interestingly, appears as an important condition to expropriate and demolish the existing urban fabric in order to open up public space.

Date:1 Oct 2010 →  4 Dec 2014
Keywords:Public space, Istanbul, Brussels, Postmodernity
Project type:PhD project