Productive landscapes as a tool to sustainable growth. A study on vegetable gardens of İstanbul in Yedikule to revive the idea of sustainable growth

Food matters in designing and planning cities because how it is grown, transported, bought, cooked, eaten, cleaned up and disposed of has significant effects on creating a sustainable, resilient and convivial urban future. It's hard to imagine that Istanbul was once a city of gardens looking out across today's concrete situation. In Ottoman times, according to researcher Aleksandar Sopov, there were bostan (market or urban gardens that is generally grown vegetables ) all along the ridge passing through Istanbul's old city, many associated with that area's large mosques, and fed by water from the Valens Aqueduct. As recently as 1900, Istanbul was home to more than 1,200bostan covering as many as 12 square kilometres. Highly productive and tended with sustainable techniques passed down through generations, many of these gardens continued providing food for the local population until mass urbanization kicked off in the 1960s and 1970s. These days, only a scant few bostan remain in the city. The extensive gardens at the base of the old city walls are under threat from development. Just inside İstanbul's Theodosian walls lie the remains of a series of bostans, urban gardens that flourished in an area that has been cultivated since the Byzantine period. One of the most important one is called Yedikule (or the Seven Watch Towers) Bostanı. Gardeners once grew tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, arugula, parsley and Yedikule marul, the gardens' specialty lettuce. There are not gardens like this in other parts of Turkey, in the middle of cities. Losing these gardens is like losing cultural heritage, losing the interaction between the people and the water and the city. Paul Kaldjian notes that urban agriculture “minimizes the city’s reach into the countryside, increases the city’s self-reliance and sustainability, and reduces negative environmental and socio-economic impacts on both urban and rural areas” (Kaldjian, 2004). However in July of 2013, following a municipality decision that aims to transform the Yedikule Bostan into a recreational park, bulldozers trampled over the gardens and filled the area with rubble, displacing the farmers who earned their living tilling the soil.But the rapid transformation of the city has also sparked a movement to plant new gardens as a form of resistance, with community-based groups of volunteers taking over empty lots and trying to revive urban food-growing (Moda-Gezi Bostanı, Cihangir-Roma Bostanı, Rumeli Hisarı-Tarlataban). This project is a study which aims to create an awareness on this important living legacy as a agricultural-historical space where the people of İstanbul could learn and experience about soil, trees and plants, and pursue this hundreds of years intangible cultural heritage through the daily life of İstanbul.