Streets as a space of urban memory: Istiklal Street case

The streets, as an important part of the transportation network of the cities, are not only taking a significant role as a means of transportation but also as a public space for the places they host at the same time. As the city is affected by the social, economic and societal situation; streets are changing by the influence of the circumstances they live under. This situation may also lead to disappearance of the urban memory as it grows by articulation Beginning in the 1990s, the effects of globalization have continued to increase rapidly in urban areas. Globalization, which causes the cities to have the same identity all over the World rather than their local identities and to turn the cities into a factory that is serving to global economy, give harm to the memories of the cities. Cities are losing their original features and becoming more and more similar. Streets, which are a public part of cities, have started to serve to global economy by losing their self-place. Places, preserving the common memory of urban people, are closed; instead of them new places that we can confront in any city of the world are being dispersed. These places are not meeting the pattern of the street they exist, and this is resulting in nonsense of belonging for the person visiting these spaces. In this study, loss of memory as a result of globalization is researched in the streets that are the common memory spaces of the cities. The effect of globalization within the memory of streets were reviewed by the case study carried out on İstiklal Street, one of the first places that spring to mind when it is said memory in İstanbul.