The design of cities - case files

[the spliff fairy]

yep La Defense is amazing, a cross between the best of Courbousier and the best of avant garde

[the spliff fairy]

ok here goes: Istanbul, the city on two continents. Population 12 million city, metro 18? million, three thousand years in the making.

by Mehmet Hamurkaroglu

www.yannarthusbertrand.com



The area of Constantinople below, lost in the rapidly expanding metropolis of Istanbul

www.geospace.com



In its long history, Istanbul served as the capital city of the Roman Empire (330-395), the Byzantine Empire (395-1204 and 1261-1453), the Latin Empire
(1204-1261), the Ottoman Empire (1453-1922) and is now the largest city (though no longer capital) of the Republic of Turkey (1922-present).

www.uncp.edu



Byzantion was established on the site of an ancient port settlement named Lygos, founded by Thracian tribes between the 13th and 11th centuries BC,
along with the neighbouring Semistra, but was colonised by the Geeks in 685 BC. After numerous sackings (the Romans in 196 AD, the Crusaders in
1261, the Ottomans in 1453), the modern city arose with the Ottoman Empire's conquest of the Greek city of Constantinople.


The Greek cathedral of Hagia Sophia, the worlds largest dome and church of its time.

www.dashofer.hu and www.sights-and-culture.com



By then it had dwindled into a population of 30-40,000, but increased with its new title as capital of the Ottoman Empire. Captured POWS were freed into
the streets and 4000 families were relocated into the empty parts of the city by order of the Sultan whether they be Christian, Muslim or Jew. Thus a
unique and cosmopolitan society was created, and that lasted for the next 500 years. Construction started on a grand scale, the grand mosques, the
palaces, bazaars and official buildings, alongside a flourishing of the arts and culture.


The Islamic City:

www.imageshack.us


The Grand mosques were built in every major neighbourhood, huge edifices designed to
impress, unlike traditional mosque design that valued simplicity and modesty.

http://cascolytravel.com and www.smi-online.co.uk


When the Blue Mosque (2nd pic) was built with six minarets it offended the Islamic world. The Sultan, in appeasement,
funded the building of two extra minarets onto the Grand Mosque in Meccah.

www.sunexpressnews.com


The Islamic edifices:

Thanx to Jakob and www.iconofile.com

Jakob



The labyrinthine Grand Bazaar sees crowds of up to 400,000 a day.

www.istanbulhotels.de



With the changing fashions of the day the Ottoman Empire could not help but be influenced by the conquered peoples of its empire, and vice versa. By
the 1870s much new architecture was in the Parisian styles of the heyday:

www.wikimedia.org



Following the destruction of numerous Turkish towns and cities by Greek troops in the War of Independence Istanbul suffered greatly in the
revenge attacks against the millennia old Greek community, the majority of them forced into exile to Greece. The culmination in the 1955 Istanbul
Pogrom left 4,000 shops, 70 churches, and 30 schools destroyed.

www.wikimedia.org


The creation of the Turkish state also saw a distinct change in style - European designs were abandoned in favour of re-Turkicising the city. Numerous
Turkish built and designed public buildings were destroyed for merely looking European, and -although strictly a secular state was replaced by Islamicised
effigies.

www.wowturkey.com


However there are still thousands of survivors. Istanbul is one of the most
European cities in/outide of Europe:

by Gokhan Ozcan www.imageshack.us and www.wowturkey.com


Jakob


the architectural mix is on a par with London's:

www.wowturkey.com

thanx to Allan

http://static.panoramio.com

www.wowturkey.com


Both in the centre and out the buildings are still mixed and often pleasingly confused

Italianate:

sercan.de


Spanish:

http://galeri.istanbul.gov.tr


French:

www.wowturkey.com


Middle Eastern:

Thanx to Kuvvaci



The traditional clapperboard housing of Istanbul saw in its heyday. Note the
fusion of styles, from the European roof to the Islamic onion dome, the European balconies and Middle Eastern screens.

www.wikimedia.org


following from www.wowturkey.com






Population change followed in the 1970s as the Anatolian rural migrants flooded into the cities.
Many illegal buildings were set up, leading to 65% of the city housing being unsafe,
especially in light of the 1999 earthquakes that killed 18,000.There are 80,000 buildings
the Turkish geological survey reccommend for demolition, that could collapse in Istanbul if it suffered a direct hit.
This midrise collapsed into a crowded street as the older building next door was being demolished

www.smh.com.au and www.iris.edu


Istanbul has been rocked by terrorist bombs of late, labelled
as coming from Al Kaeda, though it is nothing new from attacks
by Kurdish rebels for decades. This is the biggest threat to the
new wave of tourism heading its way and as its newfound position
on the modern day Grand Tour:

www.isrealnewsagency.com



The population is still growing rapidly, with 11.4 million officially registered (and millions more unregistered).
Unofficial estimates at the metro population is near the 20 million mark. The city is growing by 3.5% per year and
still densifying despite growing suburbs, currently at an average 2,750 registered people per sq. mile.

www.wowturkey.com


As the city grows highrises sprout across it, away from the historic centre

www.wikimedia.org


the leafy expanding suburbs, including the Levant business district, a new satellite core,
and its rapidly expanding skyline. This is a city on the rise

thanx to Allan




The Levant cluster 2010




OK, the result, the City Today


after all the feuding, destruction, building work, population exchanges and political upheavals:

As a heady mix between Paris, Damascus and San Fransisco (architecture aswell as outlook), East meets West, old meets new Newsweek in 2007 called
on Istanbul as the new 'world's coolest city' (last time it did this was London 1995) precisely for the juxtapositions found so few places elsewhere- girls
in miniskirts passing mosques, ancient teahouses next to gay bars, swimming in the sea next to the palaces. It also happens to be one of the friendliest
cities in the world.

www.tmhairrestoration.com www.imageshack.us and www.mokumtv.nl



In short Istanbul = zeitgeist. Its currently the world's best kept secret but not for long - tourism is expected to rise dramatically as the 'secret' gets out,
and foreign visitors will reach 10 million in the next 2 years alone, and rising. This is the result of decades of state and education secularism combined/
fighting with a strong religious and cultural identity. 98% of the Turkish are unified as Muslims but come from diverse backgrounds.

www.wowturkey.com






thanx to Jakob


thanx to DU999

http://dogmouth.net


thanx to Jakob


http://tinypic.com




by Siamak Jafari, www.imageshack.us



The forward thinking mayor is a trained modern architect but is busy restoring
the old parts of the city. Narrow alleyways now jostle for space, especially with
the Turkish love of coffee. The pedestrianisation and restoration of the centre
continues at a breakneck pace:

Before:

www.sercan.de


After:

Allan
[img]

www.istanbuldailyblogspot.com and www.cooltownstudios.com



Many of the old alleys provide respite from the crowds, and seem awaiting for the pedestrianisation
and restoration, and the ubiquitous takeover of cafe life:

http://galerii.istanbul.gov.tr and thanx to Jakob

www.sercan.de

www.wowturkey.com



www.photobucket.com


With massive pedestrianisation
www.flickr.com

http://cache.virtualtourist.com and http://uebermorgentau.net



Before and After old buildings

These thanx to Messiah




Alongside strengthening the illegal buildings of the 1970s:

Allan and www.wowturkey.com



and undoing the mistakes. Istanbul is the only major city doing this:

Before and after:

all these thanx to DU999













The logical progression in pictures,
the main streets:

At the beginning of the 20th century.

thanx to www.sercan.de for these, www.imageshack.us


1950s Street opened to cars



Some years later the nostalgic tram line doesn't exist anymore, the area getting more unattractive. Buildings full of signs.




After 90's until today:
Several renovations and restorations. The tram line is back and buildings are rented to high prices again.

DU999 and www.gaxi.com


www.wowturkey.com


And the ripple effect in the sidestreets:
This is what's best about the city, despite the millions there are so many respites of peace.
ww.wowturkey.com



The rich and upper middle classes live all along the gorgeous coastline

The next three by Morris Alakalay






with the urban coast studded with vistas and inlets.

Jakob and http://nucleus.istanbul.edu.tr

www.imageshack.us and Jakob



The middle classes and poor live in midrise districts both old and new:

www.affordablehousinginstitute.org and http://www.berkshirefinearts.com

www.seanspraguephoto.com and www.cmestudio.com


but in areas more vibrant:

www.imageshack.us

Jakob





Public transport is well run and extensive enough, but crowded and still giving way to the car. It is outdated
in both a good as well as bad way, but there is much extension and improvement going on, notably the metro:

www.wowturkey.com

Jakob

thanx to Jakob and Allan



There is a burgeoning art scene, and much tradition of political protest. Istanbul is currently a place
fighting between a left wing city and a right wing economy and countryside. This makes for great
frisson, and part of the reason why only now is it so 'cool':

www.wowturkey.com





Jakob

Jakob

Jakob


Final pics,
Istanbul life:
thanx to Du999

[JPBrazil]

Very interesting thread

[Cunning Linguist]

brisavoine -->

One of the reasons for Paris's wide streets is to stop people from being able to blockade the streets with furniture/whatever in order to riot. With such wide streets, the ability of Parisians to riot is greatly diminshed (police/army can get through).

[Koen Acacia]

Excellent thread. I really like the way you're combining the buildings with the people in it - that's what cities are about after all.

[Mr Bricks]

^I was about to say that too. You beat me to it

Great thread! Istanbu looks amazing!

[brisavoine]

Originally Posted by Cunning Linguist

brisavoine -->

One of the reasons for Paris's wide streets is to stop people from being able to blockade the streets with furniture/whatever in order to riot. With such wide streets, the ability of Parisians to riot is greatly diminshed (police/army can get through).

Yes, that's another reason I forgot, but it's not the number one reason. The number one reason was health concerns, that's quite obvious from the 19th century litterature. There was a movement in favor of destroying the Medieval quarters and widening the streets as early as the 1820s, and the widening of streets continued even after the Republic was established in 1870. In fact the Paris you see today is "incomplete". They couldn't complete their entire project of street widening (when I say "they" I mean all the authorities all along the 19th century whether they were royal, imperial or republican authorities).

With the First World War the widening of street and razing of Medieval quarters stopped. That's why Le Marais was saved from destruction. That's why the rue de Rennes stops at St Germain des Prés instead of butchering its way through the medieval village of St Germain des Prés and reaching the right bank via a new bridge over the Seine.

The damage they did to the Medieval heart of Paris is very great, but it could have been even worse had the First World War not stopped everything. You can see it in some streets in Paris in the Medieval heart of the city: for example rue St Martin near the St Merri church. Part of the street is very large, then it suddenly becomes very narrow; there you can tell they planned to widen the entire street but were stopped by WW1 and never resumed street widening after the war.

[Metropolitan]

Originally Posted by brisavoine

Yes, that's another reason I forgot, but it's not the number one reason. The number one reason was health concerns, that's quite obvious from the 19th century litterature. There was a movement in favor of destroying the Medieval quarters and widening the streets as early as the 1820s, and the widening of streets continued even after the Republic was established in 1870. In fact the Paris you see today is "incomplete". They couldn't complete their entire project of street widening (when I say "they" I mean all the authorities all along the 19th century whether they were royal, imperial or republican authorities).

Indeed, the riots argument had mainly been advanced as a "good side effect" to help convincing a government which has always been scared by Parisian insurrections, but it's clearly not at the very origins of the idea to widen the streets. That specific riot argument became popular in Paris because it always had a conflictual relationship with the national government, however its importance tends to be exagerated by the traditional memory. Just so that everyone understands the climax, despite France being a democracy almost continuously since 1870, the Paris governing authorities were nominated by the national government untill the 1970's. It's only in 1977 that Parisians could democratically elect their mayor for the first time in more than a century!

I agree with Brisavoine that health conditions improvement was the first reason motivating Haussmann's plan. Paris had then a long history of awful health condition, and high mortality rate. By the end of the 18th century, the conditions were so awful that it's been decided to evacuate all Parisian cemetaries and transfer the corpses to the catacombs at the limit of the city. The purpose being to stop the rainfall water contamination which was devastating the population. All this to say that health has always been a very sensible issue in Paris, explaining why authorities were ready to launch huge plans in order to get rid of something which sounded then as nearly impossible to solve.

However, besides the health reason, an important secondary reason (probably more than preventing riots) was simply to make circulation easier in the city. Paris was very packed up and very densely populated at the time. Circulation along small streets in horse-powered omnibuses were extremely slow. As such, at the same time streets were widened, Paris created a huge tramway network from 1855 to the end of the 19th century. Let's not forget that at the same time streets were widened, Paris had been enlarged (1860), making distance longer to travel and thus requesting a better transportation system.

Clearly, Haussmann's plan has been thought in order to bring breath to Paris.

[Metropolitan]

Originally Posted by brisavoine

With the First World War the widening of street and razing of Medieval quarters stopped. That's why Le Marais was saved from destruction. That's why the rue de Rennes stops at St Germain des Prés instead of butchering its way through the medieval village of St Germain des Prés and reaching the right bank via a new bridge over the Seine.

The damage they did to the Medieval heart of Paris is very great, but it could have been even worse had the First World War not stopped everything. You can see it in some streets in Paris in the Medieval heart of the city: for example rue St Martin near the St Merri church. Part of the street is very large, then it suddenly becomes very narrow; there you can tell they planned to widen the entire street but were stopped by WW1 and never resumed street widening after the war.

I understand this could sound outrageous to some, but I actually wouldn't have minded so much if the rue de Rennes would have been expanded to the rue du Louvre. It would have made the street even more vibrant. As a matter of fact, the Beaubourg areas hasn't lost its medieval feel despite the boulevard Sébastopol, and the Centre Pompidou. Furthermore, I must confess that I personally like a lot more rue de Rivoli than rue Saint-Antoine.

[trainrover]

Originally Posted by the spliff fairy

an extended showpiece metro

Savas

Huh?!? You mean, its choking weeds are its showpiece over there?

[the spliff fairy]

nope, its museum cut away sections are

I'll edit these pix in too





stephen pougas www.flickr.com
image hosted on flickr

[Mr Bricks]

But why weren´t the streets in London widened? London was after all much larger than Paris at the time (mid 19th century).

[brisavoine]

Streets in London were much larger than in Paris, thanks in part to Wren's rebuilding of London, and also because the Medieval heart of London was very small compared to Paris, so the city expanded much beyond its Medieval heart (starting already in the 17th century), in less crowded conditions, whereas Paris did not really expand beyond its large Medieval heart until Haussmann (well it expanded before, but not much). When Haussmann came in charge in 1853, London was considerably more modern than Paris, it had larger and better paved streets, it had a better sewerage system, its had several large parks when Paris had only the small Tuileries and Luxembourg.

Napoleon III lived in London before returning to France in 1848, and he wanted to make Paris as modern as London. It just happened that they outdid their model, as often happens, and so streets in Paris are now larger than in London, the sewerage system is also much larger, and the Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes parks are much larger than any park in Central London, but that's not how it was until the middle of the 19th century.

It's only now that we feel London streets are too small, but till the 20th century they looked large enough in comparison to Medieval Paris and there was no need for an Haussmannian transformation of London. After WW1 it has become unthinkable to raze entire neighborhoods and build large avenues as Haussmann did, that's why nobody has touched the centers of London and Paris since then, except in the areas that the Germans bombed during the last war.

[the spliff fairy]

Even though streets were widened and buildings torn down constantly, it was done piecemeal. They kept the layout but not the buildings necessarily. To 'straighten' a single street would mean affecting all the other connections around it, so thus they just kept to the same connections as had been established for centuries.

[SYDNEY]

The best thread @ SSC - EVER !! Thank you for all your effort and time

[acc521]

Absolutley brilliant!

[Metropolitan]

When I think about it, my favourite cities I've been to actually all have wide and straight boulevards which result from a tight urban planning. Those cities are New York City (the Queen of all cities), Paris, Barcelona and... Berlin.

I've always wondered why I liked so much Berlin considering it's not even close to be as dense as the three other cities, but I just realized it does have wide and straight boulevards too. Probably those wide and straight boulevards does a lot to give an urban vibe to a city. When you walk on Passeig de Gracia in Barcelona, it's insane the energy you feel surrounding you.

[Cunning Linguist]

I like narrow streets. Small ones and back alleys where you can find undiscovered things! (I just realised the number of innuendos you could draw from that is ridiculous )

But year. Small winding streets with small local shops are vital imo to giving each city it's character. (Obviously if all the streets in a city were super wide boulevards then that would have it's own character too).

[poller1]

Originally Posted by Cunning Linguist

I like narrow streets. Small ones and back alleys where you can find undiscovered things! (I just realised the number of innuendos you could draw from that is ridiculous )

But year. Small winding streets with small local shops are vital imo to giving each city it's character. (Obviously if all the streets in a city were super wide boulevards then that would have it's own character too).

I like cities with both !

[Zenith]

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