• What? Urban Research Series Lecture “Variegated Processes of Green Grabbing in Istanbul"
• When? Thursday, 27.02.2025, 15:00
• Where? ITAS, room 418, Karlstraße 11, 76133 Karlsruhe AND on Zoom (for Zoom details please contact Meike Hebich ( meike hebich ∂does-not-exist.kit edu)
• Who? Dr Aysegül Can (Institut für Regionalwissenschaft / KIT) & Dr Bahar Sakizlioglu (Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam)

The lecture will be held in English.

Abstract

Amidst the ongoing climate crisis, urban greening has become a central theme in discussions on real estate development and urban policy (Angelo, 2019). Scholars have examined how real estate developers exploit green rent gaps by investing near urban greening projects, a phenomenon termed ‘urban green grabbing’ (Anguelovski et al., 2019). While green grabbing is often discussed in the context of urban greening initiatives in the Global North (Angelo, 2019), there has been less focus on cities in the Global South
regarding the intersection of urban development and green grabbing. Addressing this gap, this paper concentrates on various ways green grabbing manifests in the Global South, using Istanbul as a case study. Four processes are explored: nature enclosure, sustainabil-ity-driven urban renewal, urban greening initiatives, and green buildings.
The paper concludes that while green grabbing is not new in Istanbul the sustainability agenda has perpetuated and legitimized it, often resulting in violent forms of dispossession that deprive many of access to housing, communities, and nature as common resources.

Aysegul Can

is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Regional Studies. Her research interests include gentrification, housing financialization, urban resistance movements, spatial inequalities in marginalized areas, and precariousness in higher education. She is currently researching more equitable and green ways to access housing with regard to the housing-energy efficiency/energy poverty nexus. She is an editor in Radical Housing Journal and in PlaNext, and viewpoint editor in International Development Planning Review.

Bahar Sakizlioglu

is an Assistant Professor at Institute for Housing and Urban Develop-ment Studies, Erasmus University, The Netherlands. She lectures in the Master Track Housing and Land Justice and Master’s in Urban Governance, teaching qualitative method-ology, social and spatial justice, housing justice, and gender justice, among other subjects. Her main research interests include gentrification, displacement, housing justice, feminist urbanism, social reproduction, and comparative urbanism.

About Urban Research Series at ITAS

Organized by: Georgia Alexandri, Tim Fraske, Claudia Schreider, Ulrich Ufer

Urban research and technology assessment intersect in studying the complex interactions between technology, society, and the built environment. In the Urban Research Series at ITAS we aim to stimulate knowledge transfer across disciplines and foster networking to contribute to sustainable, equitable, and resilient cities of the future.