State-led Urban Regeneration: Transforming Cities and Citizens

虽然世界各地的城市都在经历一个充满希望的繁荣的城市复兴过程，但并不是每个人都能从这些发展中平等受益。更令人担忧的是，政府通过软硬兼施的措施，为这种排斥提供了便利。在此背景下，我的博士研究了国家在实施土耳其城市重建方面的作用，重点是2006-2015年间安卡拉的一个市政棚户区改造项目。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订。这导致大量棚户区被大规模拆除，居民被重新安置在城市外围的集体住房单元，而不是他们的流离失所。民族志和文献研究表明，如果棚户区居民继续效忠国家政策，他们就可以从国家主导的城市重建中受益，而反对/替代城市重建的主张则被定为犯罪并受到惩罚。因此，城市重建与政府创建顺从公民的政治项目有关，这是过去十年土耳其日益增长的威权主义的基础。奖学金有三个核心目标，这三个目标有助于我实现为研究和激进主义提供信息的学术生涯的目标。第一个是通过3种出版物、会议报告和对荷兰城市研究人员的海外访问，传播我在一个新的学术领域的博士研究成果，调查城市重建在促进日益增长的威权主义中的作用，从而为学术做出贡献并扩大学术范围。第二个目标是为一个比较项目申请研究资金，该项目以我博士学位的一个关键主题为基础，即城市复兴影响公民身份的重塑以及城市的建成环境。在奖学金期间，我将为城市研究基金会为期三年的全额资助博士后研究奖学金(2021年10月)制定一份提案。这个后奖学金项目将通过人种学研究，探索土耳其、英国和荷兰由国家资助的公共/棚户区住房的再生。在欧洲和非欧洲背景下从国家的角度研究城市更新，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增强城市更新的学术地位。该研究金的第三个目的是为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他们的工作产生影响。我的博士项目中的人种学田野工作让我深入了解了住房斗争在动员公民作为权利倡导者方面的潜力和局限性，这些公民可以反对威权国家的做法。在安卡拉和约克先前接触的基础上，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；并在约克(2021年5月)组织一次公开小组会议，将在不同区域产生志同道合的活动家和从业人员联盟。两者都将导致出版开放获取的在线报告，概述这些公共活动的研究结果和结果。这些报告可以帮助活动家和社区组织了解住房政策和斗争在重建公民身份方面的调解作用，以适应全球民粹主义威权主义和本土主义主张的复兴，并动员更有效的激进主义。

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.