Public power of historical city centers in sustaining spatial identity through implications of urban design: The case of Istiklal Street and Taksim Square (Istanbul)

Public spaces are common spaces which belong to the society and are open to everyone where nobody is considered as an outsider. They are shared and accessed by all individuals of the society, where different point of views can come together and exist together. All spatial experiences and social relations which occur in public spaces involve social production of urban culture. Public spaces shape identity of urban space and have historical traces of cities; they also take on the task of generating collective memory. The case study of this thesis, Taksim Square and its surrounding have been one of the most powerful memory places in Early Republic Period; and its physical environment has witnessed various inventions due to the aim of indigenizing young Republic in the old capital of Ottoman, İstanbul. These urban scaled inventions, the created symbol and planned rituals in the area have become tools to construct the concept of republic in collective memory. Accordingly, being staged to significant construction activities in this period Taksim Square and its surrounding define an urban space which can legitimize cultural and social expectations those were projected to reshape. With the Taksim Square Pedestrianization Project, it is intended to change both the importance on shared history and social memory and the user profile of Taksim Square, which is a cultural landscape with its components. This detection reveals itself with the transformation from the relationship between "square and park" into that of "shopping center and its front yard" in the current project. Taksim Square Pedestrianization Project is a colossal urban intervention, which is prepared on the 98 thousand meter square area with the justification of easing the vehicle and pedestrian traffic. Breaking off the current road-building relationship via the diving tunnels, it particularly destroys the area's "historical urban landscape". Gezi Park, for approximately 70 years covers up the area's important deficiency of a public green area. It is the only dense green in the area with both its unique components of urban design, and its trees and paths. Furthermore, it has a historical importance as being assigned to design to a famous urbanist and architect of the period during the first years of the Republic. Due to these qualifications, instead of disregarding the park by asserting that it is untended and insecure, as worthily to İstanbul it should be integrated to the city life by providing its upkeep and safety like it is in developed countries. Thus, this does not mean to convert it to have totally different attribute as it is aimed at present, but sustain its characteristic of being a 70 years old public green space by rehabilitating it. This thesis highlights the importance of Taksim Square and Gezi Park's location as a part of İstiklal Street and their importance for the historical cultural landscape. This work further criticizes spatial arrangements both before the project and proposed in the project within the context of urban design principles. Finally, this thesis presents rationales of a pluralist urban design which embraces all social segments of metropolitan İstanbul, solves the existing problems and supplies the needs.