digging istanbul: archaeology, mass transit, history
The metro system in Istanbul is, as this article from the NYTimes
points out, "comically inadequate." Although the nineteenth-century
T�nel--an underground funicular from the Galata Bridge up to the hill
to Istiklal Caddesi--is the third oldest underground line in the
world, progress since then has been, well, halting. The current
Istanbul Metro (not counting the still-functioning T�nel) has only two
short separate lines, both on the European side of the Bosphorus, but
on opposite sides of the Golden Horn. Mass transit in the city is like
a jigsaw puzzle: you hop from bus to ferry to tram to metro to
surburban rail line, all the pieces of the city strung together in a
suprisingly efficient and well-integrated but still piecemeal system.
Expansion plans for the metro (including a line to the airport) have
long been in the works, but as the piece points out, what do you do
when your subway dig hits more than twenty centuries' worth of
historical ruins?
It does not take an archaeologist's training to see the risks of
digging a railway tunnel under one of the world's most ancient
cities - a center of both Islam and Christendom - where remnants of
civilizations and empires are piled on top of one another like a
stack of history books.
....
The trouble is, the project's engineers have concluded that the
best route for the tunnel on the European side is beneath the old
city - home to the Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque and the Topkapi
Palace, where sultans ruled the Ottoman Empire for nearly four
centuries. The workers are likely to hit something of historical
value every time they put shovel to earth.
The article gives a good overview of the challenge posed in
reconciling the demands of historical heritage with the practical
development needs of a city whose actual (as opposed to official)
population count is estimated to be somewhere in the range of 13 to 15
million. The insistence of a UNESCO expert that "A case as important
as Istanbul should also have non-Turk experts" because of the site's
"international value" is interesting--who should have sovereignty or
influence over contested sites such as these? I'm increasingly
interested in the possibility of a doctoral project centred around
issues such as these: questioning how residents of urban centers such
as Istanbul relate to, construct, and reimagine the historical
legacies of their cities, and the ways that these relationships play
into the broader issues at stake--identity, modernity, nationalism,
representation.
posted by elizabeth at 3:57 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
No comments:
Post a Comment