Transformation of Urban Public Spaces into Heterotopias during the Covid-19 Quarantine Process

In early 2020, the Covid-19 Outbreak was identified and declared as a global pandemic. As of 27 October 2020, 43.7 million people worldwide have been infected and one month after the pandemic announcement, 4.5 billion people were quarantined in order to combat coronavirus. The restriction of the use of public spaces as a result of the quarantine practices implemented to prevent the rapidly increasing transmission of the virus has led to radical changes in the daily routines of urban individuals. In many countries of the world, especially in European countries and the USA, social activities other than special duties and obligations, medical care and grocery shopping at certain hours have been largely restricted to limit contact between people. People have had to lock themselves in their homes and carry out their business and social activities in virtual environments via the internet. Most of the public and semi-public spaces such as public transport environments with intense close contact, education, culture, sports and entertainment venues, office buildings with central ventilation system that risk infecting a large number of people, historical and touristic places hosting foreign convoys have become desolate. Public spaces with dense crowds have transformed into an incentropic agorapob, taking on a character opposite to their functions. The social and spatial segregation experienced in the process of moving away from urban public space has created urban spaces that have turned into heterotopia. In this study; Since the date when the Covid-19 epidemic measures were taken on a global scale, the social impacts on individuals and the changes in the urban society-public space relations experienced during the pandemic process have been discussed in the context of isotopy-heterotopia concepts.