
The Big Dig: Istanbul’s city planners have a problem: too much history (2015) - benbreen
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/31/the-big-dig
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cadlin
Elif Batuman is a fabulous writer; I suggest anyone who likes this article to
check out her stories on Gobekli Tepe and Turkish soccer hooligans as well.

She also just published a novel, The Idiot, and is promoting it. I haven't
read the book, but I plan on seeing her give a reading this Tuesday in D.C.

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mncharity
The Bells - How Harvard helped preserve a Russian legacy.
[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/04/27/the-
bells-6](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/04/27/the-bells-6)

[http://www.newyorker.com/contributors/elif-
batuman](http://www.newyorker.com/contributors/elif-batuman)

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grenoire
Istanbul's city planners also have a (likely) greater problem with unplanned
rapid expansion. A lot of haphazardly constructed buildings pop up fortnight,
squatting empty lots.

This form of expansion is not just at the urban borders, but also within the
city. The government has some plans to prevent this and revert the damage, but
it's not particularly well-executed.

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sidegrid
Fortnight?

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elros
A Fortnight is a period of fourteen days, or two weeks.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortnight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortnight)

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sidegrid
Fortnightly then.

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avenoir
I was in Thessaloniki, Greece 2 years ago visiting friends. The city is
unbelievably congested and similarly to Istanbul a lot of city expansion plans
are stopped because sooner or later the construction crews start unearthing
ancient ruins. Probably an issue with a lot of European cities.

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david-given
My brother's an archeologist, and spent a lot of time in Cyprus. (Fabulous
place. Go visit. Some of the best food in the world. Also, did you know there
used to be tiny elephants and hippos living there?)

There's a lot of history there. I heard him on several occasions complaining
about all that nasty modern Roman trash cluttering up his dig sites.

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Double_Cast
I don't understand the article's comment about the "big difference" between
Roman artifacts vs Byzantine artifacts. Did she mean Roman artifacts are well-
studied enough that archaeologists find them uninteresting? Or was the reason
political?

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jcranmer
Actually, the takeaway I had was that the Roman artifacts were precious and
would be taken seriously, whereas the Byzantine artifacts were considered
disposable.

I suspect this happens for two reasons. One is that the Byzantine era, being
later and more prosperous, simply has more artifacts and is more well-
understood, so new finds are less interesting. But I suspect the bigger reason
is that the Roman Empire has a better reputation in history as the glorious
pinnacle of Western Antiquity whereas the Byzantine Empire is denigrated as
1000 years of stagnant decline (although neither of these characterizations
are very accurate).

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finid
_No other race has brought such devastations and massacres, such lasting
derangements, into the life of other nations, ..._

True, but the same can be said of any empire, including ours

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hive_mind
What a nice problem to have!

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ido
it sounds like it from the outside but it really isn't. having bad
infrastructure is something that really affects your day to day life vs
historical artefacts that are mostly interesting to tourists (not saying they
should destroy them, just that it's not really a nice problem for the locals).

