Administration of global cities: A model for Istanbul

Globalisation is altering and transforming everything so that it could implement its own value system. City is one of the spaces changing and acquiring new qualities during this process. Cities are using their potentials to be able to articulated into the global economy, and transforming into a structure that constantly competes with the other cities to be ahead of them in every domain. These cities where global economy is controlled, intensified and guided are conceptualised in the literature as global cities. The cities where all impacts of globalisation may be observed, have adopted a unique administrative structure so that they could meet the rising service demand and provide the citizens with a more qualified living Standard. Tokyo and London are two examples of these global cities that have their own unique administrative structure.This study is based on the assumption that İstanbul too needs to be administered through a unique system since it bears the qualities of a global city and the impacts of globalisation are clearly observed there. With this in mind, through in-depth interviews, thoughts regarding the issues related to both İstanbul?s current administrative model and the proposed model were identified. Interviews were conducted with people working in certain positions at İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality, İstanbul?s district municipalities, and The Chamber of City Planners.As a result of the interviews, only some of the problems regarding the current structure were identified, which meant that most of the structure would be retained. In this study, in the light of the results of the field research and other studies on İstanbul, an administrative model is proposed for İstanbul.Key Words: Globalisation, City, Global City, İstanbul.