THE GOLDEN HORN: HERITAGE INDUSTRY VS. INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE

Abstract: The revitalization of former industrial areas has been one of the crucial tasks of urban policy agenda throughout the world since the mid 1970s; whereas heritage industry has become the new orthodoxy in the shift from production to consumption as means for the restructuring and reimaging of post-industrial economies in the global order. The increasing tendency to link heritage and conservation with economic development has brought new meanings to cultural assets, the value of which has started to be related solely to the economic value it sustains or generates. The commodification and instrumentalization of industrial heritage by the heritage industry, in particular, has turned out to be the determining factor for creating opportunity spaces in the post-industrial areas. At the same time, many academics are critical on the attempts to reform post-industrial spaces of consumption with privatized spaces and commodified cultures. Within this context, the paper attempts to evaluate the role and the impact of heritage industry in the revitalisation of the post-industrial spaces of Istanbul, with a case study on the Golden Horn. The results of the paper are related to the following questions: What role the industrial heritage play in the revitalisation of historic environments? What are the ways to turn such industrial heritage into sources of social and economic development? What are the likely impacts on the local economy and local community? The conclusion gives an overview of the extent of the impacts that industrial heritage has on the Golden Horn, and in turn relates this back to the wider idea of heritage industry being promoted for the urban policy-making in Istanbul