Memory Box: An Experiment in Urban Collective Memory

Abstract

Worldwide attention to user participation in shaping urban environments has grown in recent years. In Turkey it can be seen in the efforts of local authorities civil initiatives and neighborhood organizations. This study examined the bottom-up transformation of a cultural space that exists in Izmir since the 1960s in the neighborhood of Guzelyali. A new technique in oral history studies of simulating and curating a remembering process was proposed to reveal how civic empowerment developed and operated. The process examined the narratives behind collective action through a reading of the collective memory. Re-reading the past in the present can generate new processes of civic engagement and action in urban spaces.