The fast rate of change

In general, most buildings were old and run down and in need of restoration. Like in most Islamic cities, the public buildings such as Dolmabahçe Palace and Topkapı Palace and more significant mosques with their imposing domes and tall minarets shaped the skyline. Not true today.

In the early 1980s, I spent most of my time around Beşiktaş, Osmanbey, Feriköy, Pangaltı, Şişli and Nişantaşı. If I ventured over to Galatasaray to stroll down the main street, İstiklal, I sometimes passed through neighborhoods like Tarlabaşı or Cihangir.

Imagine! To go to the main customs office in Karaköy to collect a package or to post a very important letter at the main post office in Sirkeci or to go to the foreigners' bureau to renew my work permit was considered quite an outing. Foreigners back then applied for work permits at a small building on the ground floor. I remember glancing up at the mezzanine and seeing the cells where jailbirds slept for a night.

Today, I think nothing of going from Erenköy to Zekeriyaköy! The landscape and lifestyle have changed dramatically.

Tall residential building used to range from three to eight floors. Not so now.

It was not unusual before washing machines were available and affordable in Turkey to see in most neighborhoods on narrower streets clothing that had been washed by hand hung on lines between the buildings. More modern apartments in Teşvikiye, Nişantaşı and Etiler had balconies and clotheslines strung across them, displaying your wardrobe to your neighbors. Turks were careful to hang the more personal garments such as underwear, etc., such that nobody else saw them.

I don't ever remember seeing a shop that sold socks, lingerie and undergarments back then displaying any type of undergarments in their storefront windows.   

Streets had a different type of noise from today. Vendors would walk the streets pushing their carts or calling out their wares. We could practically tell the time depending on whose call we heard.

It used to be you spent time with friends and family sitting in tea gardens on uncomfortable metal or wooden chairs and usually near a wobbly table sipping tea from the small tulip-shaped glasses. People did not seem so time conscious and were not so stressed.

Just like in any contemporary Western model city, with the modernization of İstanbul, hectic lifestyles have become common.

For those of us who grew up in the West in modern urban centers, we are sad that the simple and good things in life are disappearing here. Sure I enjoy the newest, modern, popular restaurant or coffee shop, but it reminds me of the gradual transition in the 1960s onward where I witnessed in my childhood the all-American neighborhoods lose their character and downtowns died. Strip malls, mega-malls, Walmarts and Targets took over.

İstanbul has become overcrowded and has to change. The accelerated rate of migration from eastern Turkey to İstanbul has resulted in overcrowding, and housing has illegally been established. You wonder if zoning exists.

Where in the past clusters of houses or apartment blocks used to be settled by cohesive and compatible family groups, nowadays tens of thousands of dwelling units are being constructed, and it's a hodgepodge of dwellers.

The discontinuity in lifestyles is upsetting and on a fast rate of change with rapid development. Just take the new beautifully designed satellite town of Ataşehir as an example. From posh balconies, the residents look down on residents in low-income housing in the Barbaros district.

The municipality is doing everything it can to try to keep up with the rapid changes, but the pace of urban spatial change may lead to increased social instability.

The old Islamic concept of city differs greatly from the contemporary Western model, and İstanbul has not escaped the Western onslaught, which brings it challenges of conflict and continuity. More than meets the eye is changing!