Neo-liberalism and Production of Space by Small Scale Entrepreneurs in the Urban Fringe: Entertainment Venues Along the Park Avenue, Ankara

This paper focuses on the production and development of entertainment venues along Park Avenue in Ankara. The study approaches the development as a problem of urban growth and urban planning in Ankara. While piecemeal urban planning paves the way for unintended urban development at the fringe of the city, entertainment venues are produced by the contingency of capital. In such situations, capital owners make use of strategies and politics to produce these places. This study explains why and how such entertainment venues have emerged along Park Avenue, examines the inadequacies of urban planning practices and investigates the prevailing market conditions. There is evidence that the development of these venues along Park Avenue is marked by different periods in which distinctive decisions, relation patterns and events occurred. Through this process, urban land that is earmarked for a particular land function is transformed for entertainment use via fragmentary or/and progressive methods in which capital dynamics are the main determinant.