Urban Politics

Course content

This course first introduces urban politics, and then discusses community power structure in the Turkish urban context. Next, issues like decision-making at local level, the pertaining legal framework, the main actors involved in the process, the formal and informal mechanisms and structures, political decentralization, social clusters and groups, the interaction between parochial and urban politics, urban social movements and their motives, obstacles to urban integration. The course finally discusses central responses to the dynamics of urban politics.