State-led Urban Regeneration: Transforming Cities and Citizens

虽然世界各地的城市都在经历一个城市复兴的过程，有希望实现繁荣，但并不是每个人都能从这些发展中平等受益。更令人震惊的是，国家通过硬措施和软措施参与促进这种排斥。在此背景下，我的博士研究了国家在土耳其实施城市再生中的作用，重点是2006-2015年期间在安卡拉的市政棚户改造项目。这是一个动荡的十年，国家权力不断增长，住房政策在执政政府的倡议下进行了根本性的修改。这导致大规模拆除大片棚户区，并将居民重新安置在城市周边的大规模住房单元中，而不是流离失所。人种学和文献研究表明，棚户区居民被邀请从国家领导的城市重建中受益，如果他们仍然忠于国家政策，而反对/替代城市重建的要求则被定罪和惩罚。因此，城市复兴与政府创造顺从公民的政治计划有关，这是土耳其过去十年来日益增长的威权主义的基础。奖学金有三个核心目标，这有助于实现我的学术生涯，为研究和行动主义提供信息的目标。第一个是通过传播，通过3出版物，会议演讲和海外访问荷兰的城市研究人员，我在一个新的学术领域的博士研究，调查城市再开发在促进日益增长的威权主义中的作用，以促进和扩大学术奖学金。第二个目标是申请研究资金，用于一个比较项目，该项目基于我博士学位的一个关键主题，即城市再生影响公民身份的重塑以及城市的建筑环境。在奖学金期间，我将为城市研究基金会（2021年10月）为期三年的全额资助博士后研究奖学金制定提案。这个奖学金后的项目将探讨国家资助的公共/棚户区住房重建在土耳其，英国和荷兰通过人种学研究。从欧洲和非欧洲环境中的国家角度调查城市再生将进一步发挥我的博士学位的贡献，并通过结合西方和非西方案例的见解来提高城市再生的学术水平。该研究金的第三个目标是向从事住房和城市政策工作的活动家和社区组织提供信息并对其工作产生影响。我的博士项目中的人种学实地考察提供了对住房斗争的潜力和局限性的深入了解，这些斗争动员了公民作为权利主张者，他们可以对抗专制国家的做法。在安卡拉和约克之前接触的基础上，我将在土耳其社会科学协会年会（11月，安卡拉）内组织一次小组会议;在约克（2021年5月）举行一次公开小组会议，这将产生不同地区志同道合的活动家和实践者的联盟。这两项活动都将导致公开获取的在线报告的出版，这些报告概述了这些公共参与的研究结果和成果。这些报告可以帮助活动家和社区组织了解住房政策的调解作用，并根据民粹主义威权主义和本土主义主张的全球复兴重新定义公民身份，并动员更有效的行动。

While cities all around the world are going through a process of urban regeneration promising prosperity, not everyone equally benefits from these developments. What is even more alarming is state involvement in facilitating this exclusion through hard and soft measures. Within this context, my PhD examined the state role in implementing urban regeneration in Turkey, focusing on a municipal squatter transformation project in Ankara during 2006-2015. It had been a turbulent decade of growing state power and the housing policies were radically revised with the initiatives of the ruling government. This led to mass demolitions of vast squatter settlements, and resettlement of the inhabitants in the mass housing units in the city's peripheries, rather than their displacement. The ethnographic and documentary research demonstrated that squatter dwellers were invited to benefit from state-led urban regeneration should they remain allegiant to state policies, while opposing/alternative claims to urban regeneration were criminalized and punished. Thus, urban regeneration was linked to the government's political project of creating an obedient citizenry, which underpins the growing authoritarianism over the last decade in Turkey. There are three core objectives of the fellowship, which contribute towards my goal of an academic career that informs research and activism. The first is to contribute to and extend the academic scholarship by disseminating, through 3 publications, conference presentations and an overseas visit to urban researchers in the Netherlands, my PhD research in a new area of scholarship investigating the role of urban redevelopment in facilitating the growing authoritarianism. The second aim is to apply for research funding for a comparative project that builds on a key theme on my PhD that urban regeneration influences remaking of citizenship as well as the built environment of cities. During the fellowship, I will develop a proposal for the three-year fully-funded postdoctoral research fellowship of Urban Studies Foundation (October, 2021). This post-fellowship project will explore state-sponsored regeneration of public/squatter housing in Turkey, UK and the Netherlands through ethnographic research. Investigating urban regeneration from the perspective of the state in European and non-European settings will take the contribution of my PhD further and enhance the scholarship of urban regeneration through combining insights from western and non-western cases. The third aim of the fellowship is to inform and impact on the work of activists and community organizations working in housing and urban policy. The ethnographic fieldwork in my PhD project provided insight into the potential -as well as limits- of housing struggles in mobilizing citizens as rights-claimers who can contest authoritarian state practices. Building on prior contacts in Ankara and York, I will organize a panel session within the Turkish Social Sciences Association annual conference (November, Ankara); and a public panel in York (May 2021) that will generate coalitions of likeminded activists and practitioners across different regions. Both will lead to publication of open-access online reports outlining the research findings and outcomes of these public engagements. These reports can assist activists and community organizations to understand the mediating role of housing policies and struggles in reframing citizenship in line with the global resurgence of populist authoritarianism and nativist claims, and mobilize more effective activism.