The Impact of a Street Rehabilitation on Collective Memory and Sense of Belonging: Samsun-İstiklal (Çiftlik) Street

Turkish

Rapid urbanization driven by the effects of urbanization has led to distorted urban formations, dense construction, and a pattern in which open spaces for city dwellers to breathe cannot be created. When looking at city centers, this situation becomes more apparent. In recent years, with the increasing competition brought by globalization, the idea of transforming cities into "brand cities" has been one of the reasons why urban transformation projects have come to the forefront. In addition to urban decay areas, city centers with high density and visual chaos have become places where various interventions such as rehabilitation, regulation, and redevelopment are implemented. While these interventions include positive arrangements such as the placement of urban amenities, landscaping, and pedestrianization to enhance user comfort, the failure to preserve the unique character of cities and the faceless interventions on building façades have resulted in the emergence of uniform urban textures in many locations. Moreover, the transformation of façades on streets, where city dwellers interact daily, has led to the destruction of the urban memory formed over the years. However, the effects of this destruction on place attachment, or in other words, a sense of belonging, are often overlooked.This study examines Çiftlik Street, one of the busiest streets in the city center of Samsun, as a case study. Çiftlik Street underwent rehabilitation to facilitate pedestrian circulation and eliminate the visual pollution caused by signage and advertisements. However, during the interventions on building façades, visual cues that aided memory recall were also removed. This study aims to evaluate the impact of a street rehabilitation process, where functions remain unchanged but visual mnemonic elements are eliminated, on urban memory. In this context, the research explores whether the transformation of the street has caused problems in the process of recognition, retrieval, and recall (memory destruction), whether a new layer of memory (meaning/image) has formed for the city dwellers, and whether the residents living on the street have experienced a loss of place attachment. The study was designed using a qualitative approach, employing an in-depth interview technique, with a semi-structured interview form as the data collection tool. The findings indicate that, in addition to losing its former significance due to the inability of residents to continue their previous spatial practices, the street has also failed to create a new layer of meaning or memory.