‘Evolving’ or ‘lost’ identity of a historic public space? The tale of Gençlik Park in Ankara by Müge Akkar Ercan

This research, focusing on the issue of place identity in historic landscapes of contemporary cities, explores the current identity problem of a historic urban park in Ankara, Gençlik Park, within contextual and evolutionary perspectives. After setting a theoretical framework on the identity of urban space, it analyses systemically the historically specific intersections between Gençlik Park’s identity and the spatial, political, economic and historical contexts of Turkey and Ankara over the past 90 years. It depicts how the Park’s identity has been (re)configured (or has evolved) through different temporalities looking at three metrics of urban identity. It shows that place identity is evolutionary and contextual in character within a space-time continuum.

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