ekümenopolis: the end of istanbul
You may or may not know that there is an ongoing project to build the third bridge on the Bosphorus in Istanbul, which will be positioned on the North end of the peninsula. This bridge will serve only for the transit heavy vehicles and thus, the inner city traffic would be relieved from that burden.
This project has not started yet, but it was presented to the officials and they are going to decide about it soon. The third bridge project raised quite a number of questions on all levels of the social, political, economic, technical and environmental platforms, since it is suggested to build on the only forestry area of the city. Therefore, many people–who will benefit from the bridge economically–are supporting the project and many others–who will be negatively effected environmentally–are against it.
In this respect, Imre Balanlı has produced a documentary emphasizing on that subject: Ekümenopolis.
Ecumenopolis is a term that was coined by the Greek city planner, Constantinos Doxiadis,
to represent the idea that in the future urban areas and megalopolises would eventually fuse and there would be a single continuous worldwide city as a progression from the current urbanization and population growth trends.
Architect and urbanologist Prof. Dr. Ahmet Vefik Alp mentioned the term in an interview to describe the situation, if the third bridge was built as presented. There are ongoing alternative project preparation by a group of independent architects, city planners, social engineers, urbanologists and NGOs in order to come up with a better plan, which would both be beneficial for and to the city economically, socially and environmentally at the same time.
Here is the trailer of the documentary, see the forthcoming future of Istanbul if we do not avoid it.
