This past weekend, I spent 3 days at Boğaziçi University at the Şehrin Doğası: Tarihsel ve Güncel Tartışmalar Işığında İstanbul’da Toprak, Yeşil ve Su (City’s Nature: Soil, Green and Water in Istanbul in the light of Historic and Contemporary Debates). It was a wonderful, and a truly interdisciplinary conference that put together historians, sociologists, anthropologists, activists, ecologists, scientists and gardeners in discussing the representations, uses, governance and neglected significance of the nature in Istanbul, and possibilities of finding solutions to the myriad of threats to the city’s ecological wellbeing – something that impacts geographies beyond the boundaries of Istanbul.
In a panel on production of food in the city, I talked about the work of Direnen Üretici ve Tüketici Kolektifi (Dürtük).