Mardin Lockdown Experience: Strategies for a More Tolerant Urban Development

Abstract

The COVID-19 crises created a drastic confrontation with our urban, and housing environments. This chapter examines two very different parts of the city of Mardin, Turkey, one modern and one traditional, and how they dealt with the first wave of the pandemic. During the lockdown, the modern part of the city that was primarily developed through generic urban development patterns based on modernist infrastructure, went through a complete paralysis. The insufficient living conditions within its apartments and interrupted service provision emerged as the most problematic issues. On the other hand the historic parts of Mardin, built using traditional methods, sustained a healthier context, despite lacking many of the comforts of modern living and modern housing. Experiencing these differences in lockdown, the old city center’s efficiency in dealing with the pandemic, compared with the ineffectiveness of more modern neighborhoods, evoked the need to explore the features of our cities that create more self-sufficient, and thus, tolerable living conditions in the COVID-19 era. The urbanization of Turkey is generally analyzed in three consecutive periods that correspond to major social, political, economic, and spatial transformations: The Early Republican Era of 1920–50, the Post-War era of 1950–80, and the Neoliberal Era of post-1980 (Bozdogan, 2001, Akcan, 2012). The first period:was a scene for the emergence of the Turkish nation-state and the ambitious modernization efforts of the nationalist elite. The second period corresponds to the post-war era marked by popularization of politics and the unprecedented urban sprawl in Turkish cities, and finally, the post-1980 era reflects the integration of Turkey’s economy into the neoliberal world market and the cultural effects of globalization. The COVID-19 crises created a drastic confrontation with our urban, and housing environments. This chapter examines two very different parts of the city of Mardin, Turkey, one modern and one traditional, and how they dealt with the first wave of the pandemic. During the lockdown, the modern part of the city that was primarily developed through generic urban development patterns based on modernist infrastructure, went through a complete paralysis. The insufficient living conditions within its apartments and interrupted service provision emerged as the most problematic issues. On the other hand the historic parts of Mardin, built using traditional methods, sustained a healthier context, despite lacking many of the comforts of modern living and modern housing. Experiencing these differences in lockdown, the old city center’s efficiency in dealing with the pandemic, compared with the ineffectiveness of more modern neighborhoods, evoked the need to explore the features of our cities that create more self-sufficient, and thus, tolerable living conditions in the COVID-19 era. The urbanization of Turkey is generally analyzed in three consecutive periods that correspond to major social, political, economic, and spatial transformations: The Early Republican Era of 1920–50, the Post-War era of 1950–80, and the Neoliberal Era of post-1980 (Bozdogan, 2001, Akcan, 2012). The first period:was a scene for the emergence of the Turkish nation-state and the ambitious modernization efforts of the nationalist elite. The second period corresponds to the post-war era marked by popularization of politics and the unprecedented urban sprawl in Turkish cities, and finally, the post-1980 era reflects the integration of Turkey’s economy into the neoliberal world market and the cultural effects of globalization. © Bristol University Press 2021.