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Spaces of Change in the Mediterranean: Mediterranean Port Cities. The Mediterranean and the Roots of Change[caption id="attachment_1667" align="alignright" width="300"] Tülin Selvi Ünlü[/caption]Many studies explain and interpret Mediterranean port cities as the lead actors in the scene of Mediterranean, and their interrelations from political, historical, economical perspectives. Research on art, literature, architecture and urban studies is prominent among the investigations on Mediterranean. Their focus is mostly on the prominent changes with the effect of Roman and Ottoman empires.There is a necessity to explore the “Mediterranean identity”, its space and broader values, constituted by the integration of distinctive parts in a part-to-whole relation, although in today’s world they are surviving within the boundaries of different nation states.The emphasis of this study is developed upon the search for commonalities and differences of Mediterranean port cities, with a focus on their historical and geographical development throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It aims to search the traces of the past, to investigate architectural diversity and cultural plurality as important components of their character. The fragmented structure of the Mediterranean will be questioned through looking at the accumulation of the past, which also will help to regenerate new ideas for the future.This study intends to contribute to research on the “Mediterranean port city” with a socio-spatial viewpoint through an analysis of urban form components, the constituents of its identity and character. As Mediterranean port cities were highly influenced by changing economic relations of the capitalist world, it is asked how they affected the transformation of Mediterranean port cities and their urban structure; what kind of different results emerged in urban space in different cultural contexts; what has been the influences of these relations to urban form components that gave effect emergence of a port city identity.Tülin Selvi Ünlü was born in 1973. She received a Bachelor’s degree in 1995 from the Department of City and Regional Planning, Gazi University, Ankara. She published daily articles about city at the local newspaper of Ankara. Since January of 2001 she has continued her studies at the Center for Urban Studies at Mersin University and has actively participated in various studies and exhibition projects in the context of city history studies. Presently, she continues her studies on Mediterranean port cities. She is a PhD candidate at the Department of City and Regional Planning, Dokuz Eylül University in İzmir, studying the transformation of urban space in Eastern Mediterranean port cities. She published articles and books on urban history and transformation of Mediterranean port cities.