Istanbul Wants to Make Urban Data Available to Everybody
Turkey’s largest city has rolled out a number of open data initiatives to increase government transparency and drive innovation
Photographer: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
When Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu took office in 2019, his administration wanted to increase the number of places where people could buy subsidized bread. But that idea was rebuffed by the city council, where political opponents held a majority. So his digital mapping team went to work. By pinpointing all the city-run bread kiosks on population maps of Istanbul, they were able to calculate that only 6.4 million of its 16 million residents lived within 500 meters (0.3 miles) of a sales point.
“When the council saw this, they accepted the proposal,” said Erol Özgüner, chief information officer of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, the administrative body that manages Turkey’s largest city. “Numbers were talking, not politics.”