Transformation of Mediterranean port cities from the nineteenth to twentieth centuries: Volos, Patras and Mersin

Transformation of Eastern Mediterranean port cities during nineteenth century have been an intriguing field of research in order to understand and explain the transformation of societies, encountered colonialism and capitalist development. They have been mostly defined as "the places where events happened" within the capitalist relations of the period, history of colonialism and modernism. Nonetheless, the transformation Eastern Mediterranean port cities, they experienced from the nineteenth to twentieth centuries was a distinctive process, did not occur as a top-down process or as a unilateral way in any form. Therefore, as many transformations appeared in many fields within empires, it is important to look at the background of the upper scale development in localities. Eastern Mediterranean port cities were the active actors of the structural transformation of economic relations at a global scale, appeared both in center and periphery. Then, what kind of similarities and difficulties they revealed in response to similar changes at the upper scale? How did these similarities and differences affect those cities to develop with "Eastern Mediterranean port city" identity, and what are the spatial components of this identity and character? How did their urban structure change during the turn from nineteenth century to the twentieth? In search of these questions, in the study, transformation of three Eastern Mediterranean port cities –Volos, Patras and Mersin- are investigated in a comparative way. As these cities experienced similar process either during Ottoman modernization and foundation of Greece and Turkey as nation states, they are examined through spatial practices, shaping of urban form, changing urban identity and the urban components of this identity.