Popping up and fading out : participatory networks and Istanbul’s creative city project
Abstract
Hoyng began by outlining how I theorized networking as a contextual construct. Subsequently, she described the ways in which technological discourses of networking informed Istanbul 2010’s urban governance practices and their political imaginaries. Istanbul 2010’s networking assemblages cast populations as active contributors to and participants in Istanbul 2010 and the city as such. In the last two sections, analyzing the ‘participatory’ networks of Istanbul 2010, Hoyng focused on the branding of place, or place branding, not so much as a professionalized symbolic production in support of the marketing of the city, but as a psychotechnology that both incited and controlled popular participation. By reflecting on social exclusion and on urban movements, Hoyng endeavored to come to terms with some of the implications of the diagram of interactivity, effectuated by networking assemblages, for the condition of citizenship and for the possibilities of urban protest.