Changing Paradigm of Urban Legibility: The Case of Atakule Shopping Mall

Abstract

The moving structure of cities offers much information to visitors and its inhabitants. The legibility of this information is an important key to understanding and perceiving an urban environment. This legibility varies depending on social, psychological, economic, and political factors that create an urban narrative. The research attempts to explain how the legibility of public places changes over time. As a method, qualitative research was employed together with a review of the literature on the issue. It was decided to use psychopolitics and non-place as theoretical frameworks to analyze and evaluate the data acquired. This research mainly focuses on how city planners and architects created a story out of the relative mobility of cities and how this narrative changed over time. Second, a social and economic perspective is used to examine how retail complexes contribute to the legibility of the city and the adjustments they have undergone to survive. Finally, these adjustments are compared using the Atakule Shopping Mall in Ankara, Turkey, as an example. Despite the renovations, it has been decided that shopping malls can't offer a real public space experience and don't really help people understand the city because they only offer a virtual and limited habitable narrative.

Keywords

• Urban Legibility
• Psychopolitics
• Non-place
• Neoliberalism
• Atakule Shopping Mall

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