Dissertation Abstracts
A Qualitative Look at the Quality of Life Indicators in the Context of the Global Cities: Comparison Between Istanbul and New York
Author: Saim Can Beritan, sberitan@yahoo.com
Department: Politics and Public Administration
University: Marmara University, Turkey
Supervisor: Aysegul Yaraman
Year of completion: 2014
Language of dissertation: Turkish
Areas of Research: Regional and Urban Development , Migration , Local-Global Relations
Abstract
As one of the most important phenomenons of the 21st Century, the affects of globalization cities. The cities pass through an inevitable transformation and change process with the effects of globalization. This considerable transformation and change in cities that attract the attention of sociologists, geographers, urbanologists and urban planners produce new scientific studies with the development of different approaches in their own disciplines. In that regard, in contrast with the classical urban theoreticians that analyze the cities only in terms of politics and economics, other researchers like John Friedmann, Saskia Sassen and Manuel Castells have emphasized the fact that multiple urban indicators are necessary to understand the today’s cities and have built the global city thesis on that line of thought. One of the main subjects that are dealt with in the global city investigations is the quality of life. The quality of life that was analyzed by the social science with a wide range of interdisciplinary approach has turned into a notion that is referenced especially in the urban studies of the recent years and began to appear in the literature. It may be said that the quality of life that is largely referenced in the international literature has been focused on a limited scale in Turkey. In that line of thought, field research has been made field study in Istanbul and New York in order to determine the urban quality of life and the quality of life indicators in both cities have been compared by using qualitative research techniques. Within the scope of this study prepared on the basis of correlation between the global city and quality of life terms, detailed interviews were conducted with Turkish people employed as executive in Istanbul and New York in the fields of banking / finance, informatics, law, architecture and management consulting. The number of people interviewed was 36, including 9 women and 9 men from both cities. In conclusion, the quality of life fact was surveyed in the context of Istanbul and New York and the findings obtained from the perceptions of these people about with the cities they live in as well as objective and subjective indicators were taken as reference.