İDEALKENT

Yazarlar: Erdem GÜVEN

Konular:-

Anahtar Kelimeler:Neoliberal production of public space,Spatial segregation of social classes,Middle class,Symbolic exclusion,Tepe Prime,Consumerism

Özet: The neoliberal transformation of the cooperation between the state, market and society in tune with devastating processes of capital accumulation has been drastically transforming the public spaces as well. Now new forms of public spaces, diverging from conventional understandings and practices come along with new relations of power and subordination inherent in new dynamics, dispositions and strategies. What these relations stimulate is the constant process of reproduction of the volatile and uncertain axes of middle class through the symbolic and ideological struggle on the consumption of every instant of everyday life, and needless to say, of space. This article aims at examining the process in effect in terms of the production of both a new spatiality and publicity concerning the interplay between social classes and space. It attempts to conduct it by drawing on the juxtaposition of two examples which are considered to address the new sites of the production and consumption of capitalist urban life: Shopping malls, providing a space of mobilization struggle for the lower segments of middle class; and Tepe Prime, constituting a constructive space for the symbolic legitimacy of ‘new middle class’ subjectivity. The article consequently argues that unlike shopping malls which nowadays seem to be allowing class mobilization as a semi-public space, Tepe Prime not only falls short to offer a genuine public use of the space, but more significantly, it well illustrates the dialectical relation between the social production of space and intra-middle class inequality peculiar to global market society.

---