Smart city out of a crazy Istanbul
Dear local government, you cannot make Istanbul a smart city because this city has chosen to go crazy after years of torture. In recent years, it has also committed itself to drive those who live in it crazy. Stop thinking about making it a smart city; in my neighborhood there are power cuts three times a week. First solve that.
The Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality has signed a deal with Smart City Technologies to make Istanbul the smartest city in the world.
At the end of the day, I’m a comedian. In the story, there are words such as phase, vision, strategy, travel, solution and ecosystem, but personally I have not been able to figure out what will exactly happen.
I think it is not possible to make Istanbul smart because this city is stark crazy by all means.
This city has been a port city for centuries. But because of high winds; inadequate public transportation; tanker traffic, very few people travel by sea. This potential of Istanbul has been wasted.
It is a city in which the most remarkable architects of the world have touched, but it contains the most disastrous structures on earth, depicting a museum of ugliness. Istanbul has been smashed in the face.
It is one of the oldest cities in the continent, but the desire is to knock down whatever is historic as soon as possible and build something new in place of it. The memory of Istanbul has been forcefully erased many times.
The city spreads to Europe and Asia; it is often boasted that Istanbul is “a city where you can cross from one continent to the other in 10 minutes,” but it generally takes two hours. Istanbul’s veins have been clotted.
Despite all destruction to nature and animosity toward green, it is a city that resists and survives by self-growing a tree in the most unexpected corner of a pavement, where everywhere is full of cats, dogs and birds. Istanbul has no oxygen left.
Everybody wants to come to Istanbul from other places; but after settling in the city everybody looks for ways to run away from the city.
If the above mistreatments were done to you, you would have died long ago or have gone crazy. Like any powerful living creature with the joy of life; Istanbul has opted for craziness.
Actually, it went crazy years ago, now with each passing year it increases its level of craziness. Like any seasoned crazy, it has let go of itself, it has been having fun and has decided to make its residents crazy; which is all of us.
Whatever it means to be a smart city - maybe it measures your blood pressure when you press the button at the bus stop - but before anything else, dear municipality, please solve the problem of my neighborhood where power goes out three times a week. When it rains, its basements are flooded - still. Constructions are still not controlled and workers die. There are not enough parks. You keep on cementing places, putting plants in pots there and calling them a park. Are you aware that every year a species of fish goes extinct in the Bosphorus? Don’t you see what you have made out of Taksim and Beyoğlu? Our museums are in despair. Take a moment to look at private museums, and then look at state-owned ones. I’m not even going to talk about city traffic. Literally, I won’t. I make appointments within 3 kilometers from my home, for the sake of my sanity.
Finish the fundamental work that the civilized world completed in the 1960s, then go on to making smart cities, visions, missions, etc.
Istanbul has a crazy hat on its head; no smart city can come out of it ever.
First solve the above, so that Istanbul becomes a sane city. It might still freak out from time to time, but this is good for us in the “first phase,” as we have all gone crazy in this city, too much smartness is not suitable for us, the city folk.