Importance of public art in the context of alienation emerged in urban space, Izmir waterfront sample

The city has been associated with civilization in both Eastern and Western languages. The reflection of the traces of civilizations that shape the history of humanity on the cities has shown that the city is a structure that unites the society around common values, belief and culture and carries it forward, rather than being a physical space. Alienation, on the other hand, has started to be discussed with the questioning of the existence of human beings by the leading thinkers of great civilizations. Traces of alienation were encountered in the discussions about the beginning of human existence in the world, and then it was seen that the unknown, incompatible with the values of the society, belief and culture, the unknown, the foreigner, the alienated person. While the city united the society around common values and carried forward, the rational systems that developed over time offered new opportunities to the society to make progress, but at the same time created new rules to be followed and new values to be adopted in the society. This change has made the city the center of alienation, in Sennett's words, "a human settlement area where it is highly probable to encounter foreigners". While the historical and originary similarity between the city and alienation allows these two concepts to be handled together, presenting the alienation problem of today's modern cities as the center has presented a problem that needs to be solved. In this study, it is aimed to determine the increasing alienation problem in the city and to contribute to its solution, and the role of public art in the measurement of alienation is examined based on the power of art to reflect the society. In the study, the city was used as a space and art as a tool, and the city of İzmir and art were limited to public art elements such as monuments and sculptures. Based on the theoretical link between city-alienation-art, awareness and alienation levels of citizens towards public art elements in İzmir were measured empirically. As a result of the research, it was observed that as the level of alienation increased, awareness towards public art elements decreased, but the citizens of the city had higher awareness of public art elements reflecting common values, regardless of their level of alienation.