<h3 fr-original-style="" style="margin: 0px; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.85); font-weight: 500; padding: 0px; box-sizing: border-box;">ID</h3>Your nickname: Jen (not very creative, I know!)I have visited in Istanbul recently: Urban&nbsp;for drinks with old friends who are back in town for a visit.I have explored recently (in the city):&nbsp;New aspects of Istanbul’s history with the KarDes app from the Hrant Dink Foundation.I live in: The outskirts of Cihangir.<h3 fr-original-style="" style="margin: 0px; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.85); font-weight: 500; padding: 0px; box-sizing: border-box;">SHOOT THE BREEZE</h3>Hello Jennifer! I am stating the obvious here, you are a writer at heart. But I don't reckon that suffices to define you. You are also an avid explorer, a hiking enthusiast, and a wanderer of cities, particularly Istanbul. How did your life story from the US to Istanbul unfold, what is it about Istanbul that attracted you?I first visited Istanbul in 2001 and fell in love immediately with the city – its dynamism, its layers of history, its distinct neighborhoods, its 24-hour energy. It made my home of San Francisco, with its fewer than 1 million people, look tiny and sleepy. I also got a small taste of what else there was to explore in Turkey and was pretty immediately hooked. I kept reading and thinking about Turkey and visited two more times before finally moving here in early 2008.As a journalist, and just a curious person in general, it’s hard to imagine ever running out of story ideas, places to explore, and things to learn here. I worked for an environmental magazine in the US and am still passionate about those issues but while living in Istanbul I’ve really been able to expand my professional scope and write about urbanism, contemporary art, social justice, archaeology, cultural heritage, food, and a huge range of other topics, which is very rewarding. You are specifically interested in urban development in relation to the environment. This is manifested in your various written contributions to the media outlets on this issue. I wonder how you evaluate Istanbul as an urban space within the bounds of the environment?Istanbul has an incredible natural location whose value has been recognized since its earliest settlement. Historical records about the fruit and vegetable gardens that used to cover big swaths of the city, or the huge numbers of fish that used to swim through the Bosphorus, are astounding to read. Even with all the urban development, Istanbulites can still see dolphins from the ferry, storks migrating overhead in the spring, and some 2,500 plant species thanks to the convergence of different climates and topographies here.But rapid population growth and poorly planned development have severed Istanbul from its environment, and much of the nature that’s left around the city remains at risk. The effects of this are very serious, not only ecologically but also in terms of the city’s resilience to natural disasters. Open spaces that were supposed to serve as earthquake assembly areas have been paved over, and all that concrete means heavy rainfall can create damaging flash floods.<img src="https://images.aposto.com/2022/7/5/1660319851306.jpeg" style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px; border-style: none; position: relative; cursor: pointer; padding: 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box;" width="550" ratio="0.67" fr-original-style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px;" fr-original-class="fr-draggable">Jennifer with a dog friendPhoto: Deniz Sabuncu<hr fr-original-style="" style="height: 0px; overflow: visible; border-bottom: none; clear: both; user-select: none; break-after: page; box-sizing: border-box;">You might be dwelling more on urban development, environment, and their mutual relation, but these subjects are only a snippet of your wide-ranging working interest. I wonder how do you choose your working matter?As a freelance journalist, I sometimes get assignments from editors but mostly have to convince them that I have an interesting story to tell, so choosing topics to pitch is always a balance between what I want to write about and what I think people will want to read. I would probably be more successful if I could focus more on the latter, but I just get so fired up about the stories I think are important and interesting, I can spend months or even years trying to find a home for them.I’m definitely interested in any story that sheds light on how Istanbul has changed and is continuing to transform, especially if that gives me a chance to learn something new about the city. That’s a big common theme in my work, but encompasses a broad variety of topics: Istanbul’s Byzantine history, how its 20th-century housing stock developed, its street food, or the way urban development policies contributed to last summer’s ‘sea snot’ invasion.Another thing I’m always drawn to are people with a passion or a cause. I learn so much from talking to activists, academics, artists, and others, and am always looking for ways to highlight people who are trying to make some kind of positive change in the world. It’s not really the writing part of my job that I love but the opportunity it gives me to get into other people’s worlds (if only briefly) and share what I find so inspiring or fascinating about them.

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