Istanbul Towers

Over the weekend I read this article about three apartment blocks in Istanbul that, in spite of being only recently complete, are about to be demolished.

Okay, so imagine Istanbul, all domes and spires, dripping in heritage and resplendent. That's how the city wants to represent itself, so the demolition of these awkward sore thumbs seems obvious but, really, they shouldn't have even come in to existance.

Amongst the rampant construction of Istanbul and the construction boom in Turkey this appears to be a problem in most places through out the country while the Prime Minister just kinda shrugs. He must be unable to see the problem with cities that have followed the demolish-everything-and-just-build-new-ones stratagy. City breaks to Dubai must appeal to him.

It seems that the planning, tendering and construction process is being revamped all the time by each successive government, thus creating loop hole that developers find easy to exploit. Lets face it, the people who sign off on these decisions can't see past the giant piles of money when they are mates with the developers. You'll probably remember the insane proposal for 'revamping' Gezi Park that made world news this time last year. Not that it made a difference unfortunatly.

So why go back and demolish these bores and not others like it? Maybe because Unesco have been grumbling about putting the city on it's endangered list in light of all the bulldozing of historical parts of the city. Either way the construction firms of Recep Tayyip Erdo definitely have a plan. I hope he sleeps well on his bed of money becasue many are wishing he will die of a thousand paper cuts.