Towards the Reshaping of the Neoliberal Built Environment

Abstract

Neoliberalism became a dominant paradigm throughout the world through international superiors from 1970s. Neoliberalism is not only an economic dimension, but also an increasing focus of social sciences and urban studies. As a matter of fact, cities are critical areas where neoliberal capital can maximize itself. The neoliberal system is able to rapidly de-capitalize even the most splendid and public buildings, and transform them into capital and reproduce them to be aged. Neoliberal effects on the built environment and urban form could be expressed in two ways as destructive and creative effects. The concern of this paper is how the ‘neoliberal built environment’ could be reshaped morphologically in the future. In this context, it is inevitable to transform and re-produce the neoliberal built environment (gated communities with high density of construction, sterile and enclosed spaces etc.). This study aims to discuss the principles based on the future transformation and re-production of the neoliberal built environment. These principles are those; (1) The process of transformation/re-production of the neoliberal built environment should be occurred with a participatory perspective. With Whom? How? (2) The re-production of neoliberal built environment should have a strong relationship with the social structure. Why? How? (3) The transformation of these spaces should be considered in the context of urban form elements such as urban tissue, street system, plot system and building system. How? (4) A number of criteria should be revealed for re-production process of built environment to be done in systematic way. How? These principles provide a sound basis for an important discussion on the relationship between the spirit of society and the new urban structure resulting by re-production of neoliberal built environment. This study is a substantial attempt in terms of being an initiative paper on how the neoliberal built environment could be shaped in the future and leading the researches on the re-production of those spaces.