Features

Selected feature stories, focusing on environmental and urban issues as well as civil society and human rights

Turkey’s Biggest City Falls Victim to Cold War With Erdoğan

Istanbul is being squeezed in clash between the national government and the opposition-run municipality. (Bloomberg CityLab)

Why Istanbul’s Ancient Imperial Legacy Lies Hidden in Plain Sight

Thanks to politics and the passage of time, grand monuments of the 1,000-year Byzantine Empire are easy to miss in the modern metropolis. (National Geographic)

Why Sounds and Smells Are as Vital to Cities as the Sights

The growing field of sensory urbanism is changing the way we assess neighborhoods and projects. (MIT Technology Review)

Istanbul’s Gecekondu Homes Reveal the Building Blocks of a Megalopolis

Gecekondu, or “landed overnight,” homes were hastily constructed as residents from the countryside rushed to urban centers after WWII. (Bloomberg CityLab)

Istanbul Turns Taps on Old Fountains, Joining Global Push for Free Drinks,

For the Ottomans, providing water was a philanthropic duty. Free public fountains are now getting a new push. (Bloomberg CityLab)

This Turkish Chef is Fighting Climate Change With the Help of Syrian Refugees

By tapping traditional knowledge, chef/social entrepreneur Ebru Baybara Demir is helping make farming in Turkey’s southeast more resilient to climate change. (Ensia)

The 'Most Hopeful' New Housing in Turkey

Twenty years after being displaced by an earthquake, families in Düzce are getting homes that they helped design and build themselves. (CityLab)

Contested Spaces

Urban design in Istanbul through the lens of Taksim Square. (Disegno)

Science, Interrupted

War and strife have uprooted many researchers. Can their life’s work be saved? (Discover)

More features

>> What Happens to Street Animals When Tourists Suddenly Disappear? (National Geographic)

As coronavirus forced millions of people around the world into lockdown, another sizeable population had also been hard hit—stray cats and dogs.

>> The Serious Business of Satire in Turkey (International Press Institute)

Political climate generates both inspiration and anxiety for cartoonists and other humourists.

>> A Card Game Designed to Help Urban Communities Plan for the Future (CityLab)

Imaginable Guidelines gives players a shared vocabulary and base of knowledge with which to talk about their city.

>> Paradise Lost? (Discover)

Turkey’s Neolithic city of Çatalhöyük may have been an orderly society built on tolerance and equality — until it fell apart.

>> In Istanbul’s Ancient Gardens, A Battle for Future Harvests (Yale Environment 360)

Development pressures are threatening Istanbul’s centuries-old gardens, which have produced food for the city’s markets since Byzantine times. Gardeners and environmentalists are fighting to preserve them.

>> Peeling Back A City’s Layers (Discover)

Subway construction offers archaeologists rare opportunities to dig into historic urban centers — but with the clock ticking.

>> The Olive and the Power Plant (Sierra)

Turkey's rush to build coal plants comes at the expense of its most beloved culinary ingredient.

>> Dammed, Dirty, Drained by War: Can Iraq's Tigris River be Restored? (The Christian Science Monitor)

Restoring the Tigris to its free-flowing, clean former self is an upstream battle for Nature Iraq.

>> A Sweet Gig: Danish Beekeeping Program Employs Refugees (TakePart)

By operating urban beehives year-round, Bybi helps the environment, gives training, and creates opportunity.

>> Turkish Government Bears Down on Rural Resistance to Mining and Hydro Projects (Mongabay)

Villagers in the country’s lush Black Sea region face police force, legal hurdles, and more subtle means of suppression in their fight to protect the environment.

>> New Solidarity in Struggle to Protect Turkey’s ‘Life Spaces’ (Mongabay)

Emerging regional and national networks seek to build connections between local communities and provide support to their fights against dams, mines, and other environmental threats.

>> A Bowl Full of Hope (GOOD)

Soup-delivery project brings together three disadvantaged groups often ignored in Turkey’s largest city.

>> Why DIY Public Spaces Are Starting to Take Off in Turkey (CityLab)

A small but growing movement is positioning itself as an alternative to the massive development projects currently (and controversially) reshaping Turkey’s biggest cities.

>> She Turns Trash Into Cash… (MORE) [pdf]

…one candy wrapper at a time–and she’s creating jobs for Turkish women who have never had paid work before.

>> How the Garbage Pickers of Athens Predicted the Greek Economic Crisis (CityLab)

A new documentary sheds light on the Greek city's most vulnerable residents.

>> Kurdish Female Migrants Meet Isolation in Istanbul (Women's eNews)

For women caught up in Turkey’s waves of internal migration, the uprooting can be particularly harsh.

>> Between Two Worlds (Sierra)

Can Puerto Rico preserve its Caribbean beauty as it pursues the American dream?

>> Dethroning King Coal (Sierra)

A miner’s daughter stands up for Appalachia’s mountains.

>> Where the Cows Come Home (Sierra)

One farm family shows how to work the land and save it, too.