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The Big Dig: Istanbul’s city planners have a problem: too much history (2015)
- grenoire 10y agoIstanbul's city planners also have a (likely) greater problem with unplanned rapid expansion. A lot of haphazardly constructed buildings pop up fortnight, squatting empty lots. This form of expansion is not just at the urban borders, but also within the city. The government has some plans to prevent this and revert the damage, but it's not particularly well-executed.
- cadlin 10y agoElif Batuman is a fabulous writer; I suggest anyone who likes this article to check out her stories on Gobekli Tepe and Turkish soccer hooligans as well. She also just published a novel, The Idiot, and is promoting it. I haven't read the book, but I plan on seeing her give a reading this Tuesday in D.C.
- mncharity 10y agoThe Bells - How Harvard helped preserve a Russian legacy. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/04/27/the-bells-6 http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/04/27/the-bells-6 http://www.newyorker.com/contributors/elif-batuman http://www.newyorker.com/contributors/elif-batuman
- jseliger 10y agoShe also just published a novel, The Idiot, and is promoting it I loved The Possessed, her essay collection, but that love does not extend to The Idiot: https://jakeseliger.com/2017/03/23/briefly-noted-the-idiot-elif-batuman https://jakeseliger.com/2017/03/23/briefly-noted-the-idiot-e...
- avenoir 10y agoI was in Thessaloniki, Greece 2 years ago visiting friends. The city is unbelievably congested and similarly to Istanbul a lot of city expansion plans are stopped because sooner or later the construction crews start unearthing ancient ruins. Probably an issue with a lot of European cities.
- tedmiston 10y agoGreece is such a fascinating country. A few years ago I visited The Acropolis, and relative to the US, it really is mind-blowing to see a structure that's several thousand years old.
- bpodgursky 10y agoThe really remarkable part about the Parthenon is that it likely would have been almost completely intact, if it hadn't been used as a powder magazine and blown up in the 1800s. It wasn't gradually ruined, it just blew up relatively recently (historically speaking).
- my_first_acct 10y agoAll correct, except for the date, which was 1687 [1]. It happened during a war between the Venetians and the Ottoman Turks (the Turks stored gunpowder in the building; the Venetians fired a mortar at it). The Venetians compounded the damage by their incompetent attempt to loot some sculptures from the west pediment; these fell to the ground and smashed to pieces. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenon#Destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenon#Destruction
- agumonkey 10y agoWorth a spielberg movie
- mrighele 10y agoThis is a regular issue in Italy, also in smaller towns. Any kind of construction job involving excavation may end up unearthing something deemed interesting by the relevant authorities.Thanks to our traditionally slow bureaucracy, this means that construction works can be stuck for very long times (even years).
- finid 10y agoNo other race has brought such devastations and massacres, such lasting derangements, into the life of other nations, ... True, but the same can be said of any empire, including ours
- hive_mind 10y agoWhat a nice problem to have!
- ido 10y agoit sounds like it from the outside but it really isn't. having bad infrastructure is something that really affects your day to day life vs historical artefacts that are mostly interesting to tourists (not saying they should destroy them, just that it's not really a nice problem for the locals).