Urban Rent Speculation, Uncertainty and Unknowns as Strategy and Resistance in Istanbul’s Housing Market

Abstract

Ebru Soytemel’s chapter focuses on the Fikirtepe Urban Transformation Project (FUTP) in Istanbul—the so-called Manhattan-Istanbul Project—as a case study of how different policies and strategies of public/private institutions/companies create uncertainties in housing markets, of how they manage projects and succeed in speculative gains through the social construction of ignorance and exclusion of uncomfortable knowledge. She explores how local dwellers develop counteractions to resist or to adapt to the consequences of these neoliberal place-making processes. The chapter discusses the role and function of ‘mobilising unknowns’ and ‘strategic ignorance’ for different groups, and scrutinises how different tactics and strategies are developed by different actors during the neoliberalisation of the city space.