This study interrogates the emancipatory potential of urban experience by examining the actions of city dwellers in Beyoğlu, an inner-city neighborhood of Istanbul, Türkiye. It identifies a range of “space–time niches” produced through everyday urban practices and investigates various emancipatory acts and existential niches, such as schoolgirls chatting and smoking in a secluded corner of an alleyway. Despite Western neoliberal claims of expanding freedom, this study finds that urban spatial experience is increasingly constrained and perceived as intimidating and unwelcoming by city dwellers. By defining urban space as a continuous oscillation between freedom and control, this study introduces the concept “existential emancipation” as a unique experience best realized in urban space through diverse positions and acts of individuals across both space and time. Viewed through this lens, the study provides a new reading of metropolitan urban life.
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