This presentation will explore how the rapid growth of Airbnb has become part of Istanbul’s ongoing gentrification process, focusing on the Beyoğlu district. Beyoğlu currently hosts the highest concentration of Airbnb listings in the city, reflecting its transformation into a space increasingly shaped by tourism-oriented housing and investment-driven urban change. I will approach this transformation through the concept of the rent gap, which helps explain why property owners shift from long-term rentals to short-term, more profitable uses. Moreover, the presentation highlights how inflation intensifies this process. In a high-inflation environment like Turkey’s, property owners seek ways to protect and increase their real income. Airbnb offers a faster and more flexible adjustment of rents compared to long-term leases, making it an attractive strategy for closing and sustaining the rent gap. As inflation rises, so does the incentive to convert housing into short-term rentals, accelerating displacement pressures and reinforcing gentrification dynamics in central neighborhoods such as Beyoğlu. I will situate this Airbnbification process within Istanbul’s broader history of neoliberal urban policies and repeated waves of gentrification, showing that short-term rental platforms are not an isolated phenomenon, but part of a larger restructuring of the housing market. The interaction between rent gap, inflation, and Airbnb expansion reveals how global tourism platforms and local economic instability together reshape urban space, deepen housing inequalities, and transform everyday life in historic districts of Istanbul.
Orçun Çobangil
Hybrid seminar
Join in situ: National Centre for Social Research, 9 Kratinou str., 10552 Athens (8th floor)
Join online: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/31000789182296?p=dzbxn0EH8gv8JA8G7W
Meeting ID: 310 007 891 822 96
Passcode: 3iW3Ji39
The presentation of Orçun Çobangil is part of the seminar series Cities Lately of the LaSTcity which aims to contribute to the contemporary dialogue about cities as places that never cease to change. We engage in discussions with researchers from Greece and abroad about the shifting urban landscapes and their dynamic impacts on social organization and social life. We raise questions about new inequalities, divisions and displacements; about the redefinition of the city’s boundaries and its relationship with nature; about the economy of the city and the forms of its crisis; about spatial justice and the forms of its claims; about the new processes of producing the built environment; and about institutions and mechanisms of urban governance. About cities that suffocate, cities that breathe, and about everything… that is transforming (again) in cities lately.