from travel proposal:
Virilio’s statement implies an overhaul of urbanism: ‘globalization by mobilization’. Cities will soon develop around transit hubs, where people are constantly displaced, mobile and immobilized. Interestingly, one of the world’s oldest cities of paramount historical significance is also currently embodying this future city of displaced populations: Istanbul, Turkey.
The implication of Virilio’s ‘omnipolitan city’ is that urbanism will be defined by mediation between populations in transit and populations immobilized. This condition already exists throughout Europe in airport detention zones where people seeking asylum, awaiting entry or deportation, coexist amidst flows of travelers, migrants, and nomads. This localization calls into question the political, ideological and experiential differences between these displaced people. In the omnipolitan city of transit, Istanbul today, this condition is woven into the urban fabric.
Istanbul currently accommodates significant migration and tourism flows as well as a large population of people in flux awaiting entry into Europe. Thousands of undocumented migrants and asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, the former Soviet republics and Africa often spend several years in the city awaiting entry into the EU. Often these displaced populations, legal and illegal, experience the same living and working conditions and localities. Additionally, the rapidly expanding city of approximately 12 million continues to draw tourists into this urban mixture. A nondiscriminatory condition of ‘encampment’ characterizes Istanbul’s multinational and increasingly global identity, and is manifest in individual neighborhoods throughout the city.
“[Accommodating] migrants and refugees and fighting irregular and transit migration through its territory are two opposing poles of the challenges that Turkey is currently facing regarding its migration regime. On the one hand, we have to recognize the needs of “strangers” who had to leave their countries and ended up here. But on the other hand, turning into a “gatekeeper” for “Fortress Europe” has become an undesirable yet probable scenario for Turkey.” – Brewer & Yükseker, 2005
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