cities
Over at Quora last month, I tried to answer a question: "If Istanbul was left to the Greeks to manage, would it be as prosperous as it is today?" I suggested that, if as was barely imaginable it fell to Greece in the early 1920s, the city might well have been a prosperous in per capita terms as it is now; it is imaginable that European and world history might have proceeded as OTL, and the NUTS-2 regions of Attica and Istanbul are closely matched now.
Where Constantinople would differ from Istanbul would be in the likelihood that it would be a much smaller city. There would surely be population exchanges between Greece and Turkey as OTL.
Istanbul would probably evolve into a city with a homogeneously Greek population in a way not dissimilar from that of Thessaloniki, which lost its Turkish and Muslim populations in the 1920s and which lost its Jews (after a period of heavy emigration) to the Holocaust.
(I do think the Armenians likely to stay in the city--I do not think anything likely to happen to them.)
Constantinople might recover its 1920 population peak within a few decades, but there is absolutely no prospect of Constantinople growing to the size of OTL Istanbul simply because there is no way that Istanbul can grow. If the millions of Turks who moved to the city in OTL to make it a metropolis of 15 million will not come, barred by the border, and if there is no prospect of such numbers coming from elsewhere, then this Constantinople will never be a world city of the scale as OTL. At most, it might well rival Athens.
There have been threads in the past considering world cities that could have done better. Berlin and Vienna, for instance, have been stymied by the catastrophes of the 20th century, barely maintaining their 1920 numbers. Have there been threads considering cities that could have done worse, perhaps much worse?
Where Constantinople would differ from Istanbul would be in the likelihood that it would be a much smaller city. There would surely be population exchanges between Greece and Turkey as OTL.
Istanbul would probably evolve into a city with a homogeneously Greek population in a way not dissimilar from that of Thessaloniki, which lost its Turkish and Muslim populations in the 1920s and which lost its Jews (after a period of heavy emigration) to the Holocaust.
(I do think the Armenians likely to stay in the city--I do not think anything likely to happen to them.)
Constantinople might recover its 1920 population peak within a few decades, but there is absolutely no prospect of Constantinople growing to the size of OTL Istanbul simply because there is no way that Istanbul can grow. If the millions of Turks who moved to the city in OTL to make it a metropolis of 15 million will not come, barred by the border, and if there is no prospect of such numbers coming from elsewhere, then this Constantinople will never be a world city of the scale as OTL. At most, it might well rival Athens.
There have been threads in the past considering world cities that could have done better. Berlin and Vienna, for instance, have been stymied by the catastrophes of the 20th century, barely maintaining their 1920 numbers. Have there been threads considering cities that could have done worse, perhaps much worse?
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