Problematical brandization of urban identity: Marketing prestigious housing in Istanbul

Globalization has been major challenge on cities due to pressure created by competitive urban development models that enforce them to pursue new policies lead to diversity and uniqueness lately. For creating necessary transformations, cities lean on friendlier environment for entrepreneurs and capital owners have begun to have voice in the developments of urban areas especially in housing sector. Neo liberal ideology has turned out into a major beacon for cities aims to exist in the very competitive global environment by offering several options including urban branding. Urban branding created major guidance light for all sectors in the urban environment. The housing sector among one of them with competitive strategies to market the projects by commodifying the symbolic historical and cultural assets of cities. In this context the main point of this study is in general, about to explore the Istanbul's aim to be global brand, and in particular to find out how housing projects exploited the city's major symbolic assets in order to market their projects. This study, firstly aims to reveal out urban branding policies by examining conceptual and institutional perspectives. Istanbul with several urban branding studies, offers diverse policies and discourses on planning. All those are examined here and it is discovered that the city's symbolic and unique assets have been exploited by various sectors in order to brand their products and services. Secondly, in order to understand prestigious housing concept lately emerged in Turkey, the marketing strategies and development discourse are explored and all major strategies used for marketing the prestigious projects are discussed in detail. Furthermore, in this study a new distinguishing classification is laid out. "The Emphasis on the Historical/ Cultural Heritage and Root", "The Usage of Natural Heritage/Natural Assets" "The Emphasis on the Accessibility to Urban Location/Urban Networks" and "The Franchising of Urban Identity/ Name" themes are identified. Accordingly, in related with all these themes an analysis/ synthesis usage part created in order to examine the promotion and marketing strategies of thirty projects discussed. Finally in order to detail the analysis, five distinguished projects are discussed by carrying out interviews with academicians, government officials, entrepreneurs, designers, and promotion/marketing professionals. Overall, this study aims to examine the branding process carried out by local governmental offices, find out relation between public-private partnerships and to reveal out how private entrepreneurs and capital owners exploit the Istanbul's unique and identifying historical and cultural assets and ultimately unveil how Istanbul's unique identity. In sum, this study is able to present the fact that neo liberal policies in order to promote Istanbul's brand has caused commodification of her unique assets forming her identity. The commodification of assets due to demands coming from capital owners and entrepreneurs may cause the distortion in the city's unique identity in time. Therefore, it is necessary to regulate the exploitation of Istanbul's identity and brand name since the commodification may lead negative impact.