ABSTRACT
This chapter uses the fact that two very different neighbourhoods on the periphery of Istanbul have the same name, Arnavutköy, as a pretext to critically discuss what a margin is in the present-day ever expanding metropolis. In fact, there is a famous Arnavutköy on the European side of the Bosporus, in the central district of Beşiktaş, and there is another one, 40 kilometres away from there. What the chapter proposes is a reading of the dynamics of spatial and social change in these neighbourhoods, in parallel with the different administrative reforms that have modified governance at the scale of the metropolis. A specific focus is put on questions like the logic of fringe-belts making and the relationship between state-led urban spread-out and smaller projects involving less visible actors. Attention to the scale of the urban experience of the inhabitants of the fringes of the metropolis is given, through an analysis of their new ways of life and of the processes of symbolic integration they have access to, and of the limits thereof.
