The production of space and the construction of urbanity : informal practices in 1930s Ankara

Abstract

This study, employing the city space of Ankara as its case, aims at understanding the production of space and the construction of urbanity through a reconsideration of the Turkish modernization project. The study focuses on 1930s, the early Republican period, which were the years in which a nation-building process was accompanying the making of urban-citizens. During these years, in order to modernize the country the modernizing elite aimed at a civilizational shift, which brought with it the transformation of both the private and the public spheres. In this process, spatial practices -in both macro and micro level- were used as a tool to create desired urbane-citizens. Moving from here, the thesis discusses the construction of urbanity and its functions with reference to formal and informal spatial practices, both of which generated the modern space of Ankara. Through the analysis of this process of construction, the study also elaborates on the Turkish modernization project with reference to both informal and formal practices, in order to illuminate the struggles and tensions within it. Both the spatial practices and the modernization project are reconsidered through Henri Lefebvre‟s conceptualizations of social space.