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Modern residential neighbourhood in Europe and Turkey

Esra Akcan
The "Siedlung" and the "Mahalle"
The intertwined history of the modern residential neighbourhood in Europe and Turkey

The intertwined history of the modern residential neighbourhood in Turkey and Germany serves to point out the shortcomings of a polarized discussion of Turkey and Europe, and more broadly, shows how histories restricted to single nation-states do not help understand processes that occur at a trans-national level. Esra Akcan describes how the egalitarian architecture of prewar Germany was interpreted for the Turkish Republic, where it became a status symbol for a new class of bureaucrats. Migration and cultural exchange in directions opposite to those commonly known are shown to undermine reified concepts of "East" and "West".
The second map, by the architect Rem Koolhaas and the think-tank AMO, is entitled "Regime of the ¥€$": in it, a mirror image of the world map aligns Asia, Europe, and the US with the yen, the euro, and the dollar. As flippant as the map may seem, it provides a fruitful gesture absent in Huntington's, namely an acknowledgement of the fluidity of borders around the world. Unsurprisingly, when Koolhaas was asked to comment on Turkey's membership in the European Union, he proposed that EU officials forget "Europe" and let the Union expand as much as it can. However, one should not read Koolhaas' map for more than what it is, namely a big "Yes" (albeit ironic) to global capital and its three main protagonists. What the map does not say, though implies, is the big "No" uttered by individuals subjected to global poverty, a "No" not to unification, but to economic domination. Koolhaas' map parodies the way in which the unification of the "West" and its "other" is promoted on the condition that the latter accords with the rules of Western capitalism. Hospitality towards the "other" still requires that the "other" be assimilated into the "host". As such, the map is a critique of the neo-liberal ignorance that designates capitalism as the bearer of perpetual peace.
Find this fascinating essay at: Eurozine, http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2005-12-21-akcan-en.html
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