Urban Identity In The Age Of The Mobile Phone

This essay is a summary of an extended survey conducted in Ankara, Turkey (1). It shows how wireless communication technologies, especially the mobile phone, have contributed to the development of an urban identity by enhancing the mental structuring of coherent urban images. The decision to conduct the survey was motivated by the ongoing debate into the loss of identity in general and urban identity in particular. Communication, of course, is one of the main components of identity in any sense, and it is this issue that most of the debates revolve around. One of the main arguments put forward is that transformations in modes of communication hinder the processes of socialization and impede the development of identity (Czarnowsky, 1978). An emphasis on the individualization and personalization of modes of communication leads to the basic argument that: the more the modes of communication become personalized, the greater the loss of interaction and socialization. Here, socialization, which also includes face-to-face interactions, stands as a prerequisite for urban identity; and from this perspective one can easily assume that the advent of wireless communication technologies will further degrade social life and thus identity.