Realms of city memory: The passages of Ankara

Cities, which are comprised of different lifestyles and production modes, maintain their existence by cultural differences. Some cities transform their cultural capital into economical capital easily. Passages represent the best aesthetic realms of cities which can transform their symbolic and cultural capital into economical and cultural cones. Passages have been the common public places to display city's culture character since 1800s. Passages provides the continuity by carrying intercultural values in expansion of city's culture. Passages whıch are one of the the most important public places of the communıty; put forth their importance by provıdıng both individual's social reality and integrality of urban place culture. As the places where power domains become visible and secured, passages are also the realms where city memory is constituted, the set of meanings peculiar to city's culture is derived and reflected and also where communicational practices are realized. Place which is one of the most important products of culture has tıme, place and integral relations as well as concepts like culturel stock as being very valuable achievements for the individual and communıty, ideology as identity on the lead, hegemony, consumptıon culture, modernizatıon, globalization. Passages whıch are one of the first modern public architecture of the citie's versatile culturel wealth, are accompanied by practices like daily life's casual but meanıngful method, nostalgıa which gains meaning with the past, modernism and gentrificatıon. It will not be wrong to say that passages are attraction forces for a long period creatıng architectural places. Thus it is seen that, pasages as social urban places, carry significant potential which complicating urban life, affecting both social class diversity and daily practises in respect of ideology. However new comsumption areas based on new industrial production created by the effec of liberal economical policies which implemented globally after 1980, started to be more harmonious with the dynamics of indicated spiritual and practical compsumption culture. The passages in Kızılay, a district of Ankara, which has been a center of business and a living space, examined within the scope of the thesis. Both interviews and observations as the techniques of qualitative approach were used. In order to envisage the past and present images of the passages, the paasages are to be mapped. In parallel to this, through the interviews which have taken place in the passages such as, Kocabeyoğlu, Soysal, İzmir, Amerikan, Menekşe, Moda Çarşısı, Alemdar, Efes, Sönmezer, Engürü, Ülkealan, Onur, these passages have been scrutinized not only as physical and geographical spaces but also as the imaginary realms of the memory with their life experiences.The main result of the thesis is that these passages, if they were let flow naturally, would be able to keep pace with the zeitgeist and be a part of lifeworld in the long run. The main motives behind this are that the passage as a space will be remembered and that they will be exiting within the timespace continuum hereafter. Key Words.: City, Passages, Consumption, Memory.