The Political Construction of Urban Development Projects: Comparative Case Studies from Turkish Cities

Abstract

This paper analyses Urban Development Projects (UDPs) as politically and ideologically constructed mechanisms that reproduce capitalist socio-spatial relations. While UDPs have become the dominant mode of urban space production—manifested in new central business districts, gated residences, waterfronts, and shopping malls—their political-economic dynamics cannot be explained solely through capital accumulation. The study engages critically with competing theoretical approaches: neo-pluralist and neo-Weberian perspectives emphasising agent-based networks and coalitions (urban regime, growth machine theories), and Marxist geography approaches highlighting structural dynamics of capital accumulation. Both are found limited—one voluntarist, the other economically deterministic. To address this gap, the paper adopts a neo-Marxian perspective, drawing on Gramsci’s concept of hegemony and Lefebvre’s notion of the production of space, to explore how state and capital actors construct UDPs as hegemonic projects through a dialectic interplay of consent and coercion. The analysis aims to reveal the political-ideological mechanisms underlying UDPs in Turkish cities.