ABSTRACT
The basic analytical concept at the center of this book is the "open city". Acceptance of population influx, as well as lack of planning controls, has been central to different articulations of the concept. While the development of the urban form of the city since the 1950s has been marked by leniency of planning controls, various governments' episodic heavy-handed urban interventions have tended to exacerbate anxieties about the city. The rural-to-urban migrant emerged as an important figure of urban modernity early on, as depicted in cartoons, photographs for print journalism, and popular cinema films. From the 1990s, the government took a new interest in turning Istanbul into a cultural capital, in collaboration with a new host of civil society organizations and philanthropic institutions invested in a new generation of private museums. Istanbul came to be seen as "Turkey's passport into Europe".
