Paper short abstract:

Cities and life-styles change by the affects of globalization. Transformation in urban spaces should be developed with their users. Article discusses necessary of user participation in global era. Theoretical data will be correlated with practical experience of Istanbul in concern participating models.

Paper long abstract:

Cities exist with its city-dwellers. City-dweller is defined as; the user of the city. Correlation of city and city-dweller (user) can be explained with urban scale of place and people relations.

Globalization affected urban areas and the city-life after 1980s. The transformations of urban spaces propose different life-styles to city-dwellers in cities.

The process of urban transformations should be organized and realized by "participation with city-dwellers". This approach makes global transformation in urban areas more humanitarian and democratic. Citizen may have the right to have a place in re-shaping their environment. Advanced city polities participate with their citizens in urban design processes. In this article, the understanding of process integration is explained as "user participation in global cities".

User participation has been discussed theoretically since 1950s. The practicing of participation models have been first experienced at 1960s. The aim of participation models in different cities was to implicate citizens to urban design processes interactively.

Regarding globalization, participation models should be re-developed for new life-style formations in global cities.

User participation has a mission to constitute a mediating globalization in city-dwellers.

In this study, contemporary participation models will be analyzed by the help of theoretic postulations. Then the issue will be discussed in concern to Istanbul. Relation between city and city dweller in Istanbul will be introduced by a "case study in Levent" (globally developing region). Results of public survey in Levent regarding user participation will be presented. Article concludes with "a participation proposal" for Levent.