Understanding the Samsun Fair as a Public Space Through Social Dynamics

Abstract

The aim of the study is to reveal how social developments affect the spatial development and transformation of a public space and so it considers the Samsun Fair, one of the oldest public spaces of the city of Samsun, as the study area. Founded in 1963 and registered as the first national fair of Anatolia, the fair helped the city to develop economically, socially and culturally, and managed to reach a large number of users on a local and regional scale. However, it lost its influence over time and was opened for the last time in 1992, after which its location was transformed. The study consists of a reading and interpretation based on the dialectic of space and society, which includes how the economic, political, and sociocultural changes of the period (1960-1990) in Türkiye and Samsun penetrated from the ideal of the production of a public space to its spatial and functional development, from losing its attractiveness to its closure and then the transformation it has experienced. As a result, the study has revealed that the social dynamics also changed public use, and a new layer of value, meaning, and memory could not be formed for this place due to the changing spatial practices over time and the separation of this space from the city. © 2023, Istanbul University Press. All rights reserved.