Nick Hobbs from the Hiking Istanbul Project has met with students in an online lecture titled “Reimagining Istanbul’s Countryside,” organized by the English Language and Literature Student Club. Hobbs has shared his experiences that range from popular walking tours in Istanbul’s countryside to his long career in international music business. The guest speaker has given details about how Hiking Istanbul started and evolved into an online community with over 5,000 followers as well their upcoming book that maps nearly 60 hiking routes outside the metropolis. “As foreign Istanbulites,” Hobbs said, “we wanted to reimagine the quality and sustainability of urban life rather than endless destruction in the name of short-term economics. We decided to focus on giving sustainable values to Istanbul’s ravaged and precious countryside.”
Hobbs explained the motive behind the project in following terms: “two of the founder members of Hiking Istanbul are British immigrants to Turkey, who grew up midst a social and political consensus about the importance of knowing, valuing and conserving green land and historical artefacts, and with the right to roam being regarded (if not always respected) as a public right.”
The participatory lecture continued with observations of the land in its different aspects, including natural, agricultural, sylvan, and recreational, with an emphasis on the problem of sustainability. Hobbs noted that “sustainability is no longer only the dream of idealists and visionaries; as a consequence of the climate crisis, it is now a mainstream economic and political necessity - whether progressive or conservative. Either we immediately put sustainable economics into practice, or we accelerate the degradation of the planet’s biosphere that we depend on and love, with terrible, largely-irreversible consequences that will likely plunge us into the darker visions of science fiction.” Regarding construction-fueled growth, the speaker claimed that “the projects frequently don’t turn out to be wise investments but white elephants. They create huge public debt, destroying whatever was there beforehand — in Istanbul’s case, limited vulnerable precious green land.
In response to the question of what needs to be done, the speaker commented that “the beautiful, historical and habitat-rich places should need no additional reason to be protected and conserved. The places that are not, could, with imagination, a little effort and modest expense, be transformed into natural and social assets — into common-wealth, that which we hold in trust for each other and those to come.”
The event lasted one and a half hours and ended with Hobbs’ performance of his walking-inspired poetry.
