More Phenomenology Less Visual: A Haptic Narrative and a Proposed Haptic ‘Sensemarks’ Database of Istiklal Street, Istanbul

Over the years, Istanbul’s urban places have changed gradually. Istanbul has gone through neoliberal goals and globalisation-based problems, and all of them improved and altered the urban faces in the city. Istiklal Street, a pedestrian way of Istanbul, has had distinctive qualifications that made it specific among the other places over the years. However, the transformation since the 1990s created dramatic physical changes in Istiklal Street. Meantime, some different variables impressed the intangible character of the area effectively besides the physical notions. Significantly, the haptic attributions of the Street have been influenced remarkably, and this motivated us to regard the haptic dimensions of the place. This research mainly asked how Istiklal Street’s haptic characteristics come today. The haptic character of Istiklal Street has been issued to promote the distinctive haptic affordances of the urban places. The discussion here told us a haptic re-exploration was necessary to understand the Street’s transformed sensory characteristics. The findings showed us that unique haptic characteristics of the Street are still visible. However, some new facades of the buildings have negatively influenced the authentic haptic characteristics of the Street. The study underlined that urban policies and practices need to consider the urban areas’ texture, material, and graphic characteristics more efficiently and in new ways.