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The Cost of City Transformation

I was born and raised in Imrahor, a valley neighborhood in Ankara that lived inside strange conflicted feelings. This entire neighborhood was abandoned, self built small houses, green, autonomous, forgotten yet so close to the historically bureaucratic and aristocratic center of the capital. A patch of wild area where wild birds stop by when I was a child. The neglect within walking distance of power.

For decades it existed in that liminal state: half-inhabited, half-erased from official memory. Also for decades this area was considered to be the lungs of the city and had great potential. Then one day it was demolished to be replaced by tall buildings. Not gradually gentrified, but cleared entirely. The valley opened for whatever the city’s next transformation demands.

Back in 2023 when the razoring of the neighborhood happening, I went back with a camera to freeze what remained: an entire neighborhood giving away its last breath, surrendering the last traces of memory still held in crumbling weak walls and scattered rubble. These photographs are not documentation of progress. They are a record of what urban transformation costs when the people who carry a place’s memory are not the ones who decide its fate. A record of the power of the state razoring what people build with their own hands.

I have the new photos as well. But that is too ugly to show. Simply tall buildings, typical Turkish urbanization.

Imrahor valley - new towers rising above the cleared hillside

The new city already waits on the edge of the hill, creeping in to greens. Below it, the valley floor is stripped back to earth, stone, and whatever could not be carried away.

Rubble and remnants along the demolished slope

Houses that once held generations reduced to weight and volume, waiting to be removed.

Concrete stairs climbing between crumbling walls in Imrahor
Stairs still climb. The houses at the top are already gone.
A suitcase left on broken tiles beside a peeling wall
A suitcase on broken tiles, departure, or simply too heavy to take. A leftover, a sign of sudden escape or a sudden forced decision.

Photographs taken in Imrahor, Ankara - March 29, 2023 by Hasan Tayyar Besik

visual

Visual work - A ronin demo

Below is a Ronin work. Ronin is an amateur open source procedural image processing tool by an inspriational creator.

Ronin is a procedural graphics tool designed to automate simple graphical tasks, like resizing, cropping, coloring, and generating algorithmic images. It interprets a minimal dialect of LISP, look at the examples to better understand how this all works.

The code below is evaluated via a Ronin js version https://hundredrabbits.github.io/Ronin/.

Ronin work

; RESIDUAL ORBIT
(clear)
(resize 2400 1600)

(def f (get-frame))
(def x 1069)
(def y 650)

; atmospheric field
(fill (rect 0 0 f:w f:h)
  (gradient (line 0 0 0 f:h)
    ("#03040b" "#101936" "#3b214b" "#070914")))

; distant horizon
(fill (rect 0 1040 f:w 560) "#070b19")
(stroke (line 0 1040 f:w 1040) "#e05691" 3)
(stroke (line 0 1052 f:w 1052) "#4fb9b0" 1)

; spectral atmosphere
(fill (circle x y 520)
  (gradient (line x (sub y 520) x (add y 520))
    ("#121636" "#512650" "#091126")))

(fill (circle x y 390)
  (gradient (line x (sub y 390) x (add y 390))
    ("#e55d91" "#ffb47e" "#23204a")))

; eclipse
(fill (circle (add x 8) (add y 6) 245) "#050610")
(stroke (circle x y 252) "#ff6e9f" 4)
(stroke (circle (sub x 9) (add y 3) 246) "#58cfc0" 2)

; orbital traces
(stroke (ellipse x y 570 170) "#24556c" 3)
(stroke (ellipse x y 510 118) "#7a3565" 2)
(stroke (arc x y 540 (rad 198) (rad 326)) "#ff6e9f" 6)
(stroke (arc x y 492 (rad 12) (rad 142)) "#61d6c0" 4)
(stroke (arc x y 430 (rad 214) (rad 304)) "#d8ffe9" 2)
(stroke (arc x y 358 (rad 42) (rad 154)) "#ff947d" 2)

; measurement rays
(stroke (line x y 80 1600) "#19405b" 2)
(stroke (line x y 240 1600) "#28556a" 2)
(stroke (line x y 400 1600) "#19405b" 2)
(stroke (line x y 560 1600) "#28556a" 2)
(stroke (line x y 720 1600) "#19405b" 2)
(stroke (line x y 880 1600) "#28556a" 2)
(stroke (line x y 1040 1600) "#19405b" 2)
(stroke (line x y 1160 1600) "#28556a" 2)
(stroke (line x y 1240 1600) "#28556a" 2)
(stroke (line x y 1360 1600) "#19405b" 2)
(stroke (line x y 1520 1600) "#28556a" 2)
(stroke (line x y 1680 1600) "#19405b" 2)
(stroke (line x y 1840 1600) "#28556a" 2)
(stroke (line x y 2000 1600) "#19405b" 2)

; floor bands
(stroke (line 0 1100 f:w 1100) "#1d3450" 2)
(stroke (line 0 1180 f:w 1180) "#1d3450" 2)
(stroke (line 0 1290 f:w 1290) "#23465c" 2)
(stroke (line 0 1435 f:w 1435) "#1b304e" 2)
(stroke (line 0 1580 f:w 1580) "#23465c" 2)

; signal crosshair
(stroke (line (sub x 670) y (sub x 310) y) "#4fb9b0" 2)
(stroke (line (add x 310) y (add x 670) y) "#e05691" 2)
(stroke (line x (sub y 670) x (sub y 310)) "#e05691" 2)
(stroke (line x (add y 310) x (add y 670)) "#4fb9b0" 2)

; central residual pulse
(stroke (circle x y 92) "#d8ffe9" 2)
(stroke (circle x y 76) "#e05691" 2)
(fill (circle x y 8) "#d8ffe9")

; CRT veil
(stroke (line 0 1090 f:w 1090) "#111b32" 1)
(stroke (line 0 1110 f:w 1110) "#111b32" 1)
(stroke (line 0 1130 f:w 1130) "#111b32" 1)
(stroke (line 0 1150 f:w 1150) "#111b32" 1)
(stroke (line 0 1170 f:w 1170) "#111b32" 1)

(export)

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