The sustainability of cultural identity of society and cultural accumulation of space is possible by protecting them from the destructive effects of time and various external factors and by ensuring that they reach to the future with their authentic characters. Since the 1980s, the representation of past and culture to the global market with various policies has further strengthened the debate on authenticity that started in the 1960s in the context of tourism. The aim of the present study was to scrutinize the main works on authenticity in tourism experiences in the modern and post-modern periods by revealing the changing and evolving roles of the concepts of authenticity that has been shaped since the 1930s. In this context, the first part of the present study shows the development of the authenticity concept in international doctrinal documents on conservation. The second part discusses the works by Boorstin (1961), MacCannell (1976), and Cohen (1979), who are considered the theoretical beginning of the authenticity studies in the modern tourism literature. The third part examines the studies by Urry (1990, 1995) and Wang (1999), which are important studies in the post-modern tourism literature. The obtained information based on the research is summarized in the review section. The main implications are discussed in the conclusion part. The present study, which takes a critical approach based on tourism sociology, aims to develop different perspectives on the transformation of authentic urban place into a touristic space structured by the market economy that produces objects for the tourist gaze with constructed false realities.

In recent years, many studies state an interdisciplinary approach to understand the neighborhood as a unique space in the city. One of the common propositions of these studies is that the neighborhood would be improved by community-based methods and tools. Furthermore, in the case of Turkey’s urbanization, the neighborhood should have a privileged place in planning practice, including legislative tools and spatial decisions, because the neighborhood has such a potential to affect the community, thus the central governing practices. The neighborhood unit as an identical part of the city’s history and structure defines a multi-level and multi-actor governance. Despite the fact that Turkey’s urbanization practice shares some similarities with Western cities, differences occur in governance, and the neighborhood has been a subject of the approaches under local (participatory) democracy, such as civic society, participation, and decentralization. Thus, the idea and the practice of neighborhood governance are linked to public policy. Furthermore, empowerment of community-based participation in neighborhood organization is an essential necessity for both local and central democratization processes of Turkey with respect to governance. From this perspective, the aim of the present study was to expand the ongoing debates about local government by examining the neighborhood governance and most importantly by emphasizing the unique position of the neighborhood council, muhtarlık, which defines a significant characteristic of neighborhood governance in Turkey. The period that the present study is opened for discussion is important, because Turkey’s new local election will be held on March 31, 2019. Thus, the present study also aimed to expand the debates by representing the requests and expectations of local actors and communities and new propositions. In this context, the institutional development of muhtarlık will be examined in two periods (The Ottoman and The Republic) and one approach (“New Turkey”) with emphasizing the continuities and the paradigm shifts in the political, discursive, and legislative areas. The present study focuses directly on demands of Sarıyer neighborhoods, which have a significant position in Turkey’s neighborhood governance because of their struggle, empowerment, and solidarity practices against urban transformation treatment. In conclusion, influential principles will be reminded for local democracy, and suggestions will be developed within the base of neighborhood governance and muhtarlık.

The present study focuses on one of the last remaining urban gardens, the Roma Garden in Istanbul, Turkey, in the context of “DIY urbanism.” Urban agriculture has a very long history in Istanbul where traditional urban market gardens called “bostans” provided the city with food for centuries. While the last remaining historical gardens are now under threat due to municipal policies favoring urban development, Istanbul has witnessed the formation of “DIY” urban gardens in 2013. These gardens, initiated on public land and maintained by a small group of gardeners, are open to the public without any legal relation to the local state. In contrast to the last remaining historical “bostans,” these gardens, organized around the use value, are managed solely by gardeners, and the harvest is not meant to be nourishment, rather it has a symbolic value. The empirical research that the present study is based on shows that the destruction of urban public space in general and public green space in particular over the last decade in Istanbul paved the way to DIY public gardens as spaces of solidarity, collectivity, and shared knowledge, as well as spaces where ecological concerns can be raised and made visible. The present study also explores the ways in which these urban gardens contribute to envisage a new kind of urban opposition centered around the demand for public space against the neoliberal urban policies.

Cities have been shaped by the nations they are part of, geography, traditions, needs of societies, and architectural and planning trends. Different forms and structure of cities have emerged through the historical process. Physical elements that compose the different forms of cities differentiate each city from the other. From the beginning of the 20th century, the change in approach to the production mode of the built environment, development of technology, and standardization of the urban space have caused the production of similar urban environments and have resulted in the loss of urban character. According to José Luis Sert (1956), in all the cities considered to be beautiful, the unity of harmonious structures, the inter-scale harmony, the continuity of the urban character, and the human scale were taken as the basis. Lynch (1960) claims that the homogeneous spaces with harmony and texture will gain meaning within a certain continuity. He also mentions the importance of urban character. According to Cullen (1961), features such as color, texture, uniqueness, and bringing the user together characterize the urban space and make the place unique. Considering these approaches and the dynamic structures of cities, the question of how the existing urban character is formed through different processes emerges. In this study, which aims to present a theoretical and methodological framework on the definition, formation, and analysis of change in urban space, the formation of urban character will be discussed. Questions such as what makes a place unique, what makes it different from other places, and what causes changes in urban character will be explored. Urban morphology and town-plan analysis developed by Conzen, which aid the analysis of changes in urban space through different periods will be discussed in the methods section of the research. In this context, historic city centers are important because of the fact that historical stratification can be clearly observed in the urban space. This study, which is carried out in the Kemeraltı (Izmir Historic City Center) case study, is intended to be a guide for researchers in similar case studies.

The World Resources Institute reported that nearly half of the world population will experience water shortage in 2030; the effects of floods will be tripled globally. Drought and floods threaten several cities all around the country, including Istanbul. The most important factors that control the physical environment are stream systems and their basins. Are the stream basin systems ready for this process? Hydraulic system balanced in its natural basin has lost its natural morphology and direction of overland flowing because of land decisions given wrongly by the authorities. This situation shows that it is essential to analyze the physical structure of stream/river ecosystems and land use decisions on the urban, national, and international scales. The lack of integrated water law, management problems, and the laws against the protection of stream systems have caused the problem. The present study focuses on the 3344 km long stream systems that are in the basins of 168 running streams and in nearly 2740 km2 outside drinking water basin in Istanbul. The findings show that 73% of the stream systems have protected their natural structure, 27% have transformed its natural structure, and 79% have protected their natural structure in rural areas according to longitude. Of the stream systems, 21% have transformed its natural structure in urban areas because of various interventions, but they have not disappeared, they have been affected by land use decisions, and stream protective zones have been deforced. Based on the stream basin scale, 64% of the region have been affected because of the transformation, and some environmental risk, such as floods and drought, have been spread to the whole city. The findings show that streams are not independent from each other; laws must evaluate streams on the basin system scale, and streams are important internationally as they are open basin systems. Integrated basin planning and management, sustainable stream restoration program, and holistic water law controlled by the government are essential to find solutions to legal, technical, and corporate problems; protect natural stream systems; maintain their sustainability; and overcome the risks.

Compact urban settlement is one of the approaches that has been often discussed in the search for sustainable urban development. The main aim of the approach is to prevent economic, social, and environmental problems caused by urban sprawl. The compact urban model’s high-density build-up approach plays an important role in the context of greenhouse gas reduction policy that is particularly targeted at mitigating climate change by shortening the distances between functions. The purpose of the present study, on the basis of built-up area boundaries of the cities in Turkey (81 cities), was to calculate the urban gross population density which is one of the most important compact city parameters. In this context, first, the present study aimed to provide data to the national literature on urban gross population densities and built-up area sizes. Cities were also categorized according to whether they are in metropolitan municipality status or not, and the strength and direction were calculated with the correlation analysis between population, population density, and built-up area size, and thus population density, which should be used for the evaluation of cities with respect to compactness, analysis was conducted. The cities in our country have high gross population densities compared with world cities, and generally, considering only the population density parameter, they show a profile that provides one of the criteria for compactness.