In the study, bids for Üçüncü Köprü (The Third Bridge), Üçüncü Havalimani (The Third Airport), and link roads in Northern Forests will be examined to map urban commons in Istanbul. Two coordinates will be followed for mapping urban commons. First coordinate is the conceptual one which regulates the differences of fundamental conceptions relating to urban commons. At this level, use value will be analyzed in terms of public benefit which is in regard to basic features of urban commons. In second coordinate, urban spaces including exchange value and privately owned such as bridges, roads, airports and highways will be analyzed in terms of infrastructure finance. The aim of the study is discussing the “tragedy of commons” within the context of investments to be made for the urban commons and bringing into question the future of urban commons upon the basis of Istanbul example.
TopIntroduction
We need a story that measures wealth not by the amount of property or money in private hands but by the condition of the commons. (Hess, 2008, p.11)
The distribution of welfare and income is one of the main fields of interest for many disciplines including economy and sociology. Excluded from the definition of wealth due to remaining outside of money and property relations, commons1 are the warrants of wealth and welfare, being sources and themes that concern the future of humanity. Also known as “the commons dilemma”, this situation is investigated by many social scientists as a topic of interest. The existence of commons, when taken as a natural constituent of the capital accumulation process as well as the departure point of the dispossession process, exhibits characteristics that are similar to those of the first enclosure movement, during which the primitive capital accumulation took place – i.e. the destruction and absorption into the capital accumulation process.
When we view Marx’s Capital (2000) as a scientific work that has not been completed yet, we see that the process involving the enclosure of the commons, which the capital tends toward in the century which we live in, is similar in certain ways to the primitive capital accumulation process which had been widespread until the 19th century. It is fundamental to detect on spatial and historical scales the differences between the first enclosure process and the current one in order to understand the tendencies of Marx’s Capital (2000) today. As the enclosure process shifted its direction from rural areas in the 19th century to urban landscapes in the 21st century, it will be significant to include the process which involves the production of the constructed environment on an urban scale into the analysis conducted in this article.
The decision to consult the mapping method in this article is not a coincidental one. Junction points between roads and paths are revealed with the guidance of maps, which reduce the scales that are larger and harder to perceive as well as provide us with bird’s eye view (Ercan, 2009, p.24). Mapping also constitutes an abstraction process that helps us with explaining concepts in the social structure through phenomena and likewise explaining phenomena through events. Maps are concrete, scaled manifestations of the existing reality. Used in order to analyze a series of abstract concepts in a set of spatiotemporal coordinates, mapping is a fundamental method that enables us to understand the processes experienced in our times.
Istanbul, as the other global cities, is faced with a new enclosure process which causes the destruction of the nature, as it is running out the water sources, green areas. The production of the built environment is made possible through the urban investments. The public goods provided by the state or private properties have had an important role in the capitalist development throughout its urbanization history. Urban commons have become an important part of the capitalist accumulation and enclosure process.