Jennifer Hattam

“There’s one!” Hearing this cry from within their ranks on a recent late-winter night, the small convoy of cyclists pulled over to the side of the busy boulevard and sprang into action. A keen-eyed member of the group had spotted a florid pink-and-purple blanket inside a brick archway—a tell-tale sign that someone was sleeping rough on Istanbul’s streets. The team quickly poured a piping-hot bowl of pureed lentil soup from a large thermos into a takeout container, topped it with a few slices of bread and a plastic spoon, and left the meal alongside the sleeping figure before pedaling off once again toward the city’s 4th-century aqueduct, in search of more mouths to feed.... It hardly compares to covering conflict or crisis, but as an inexperienced (to put it mildly) cyclist, I had to swallow my fear of taking on Istanbul's busy, chaotic streets on two wheels when I approached the members of Engelsiz Çorba about coming along on one of their late-night rides delivering soup to...

Istanbul’s position at the crossroads of two continents is looking like an increasingly precarious perch these days, with violent conflicts erupting in Syria and Iraq to the south and Russia and Ukraine to the north. Domestically, electoral victories in 2014 by the country’s longtime ruling party demoralized those energized by last year’s mass anti-government protests. But neither strife nor political stagnation seems to prevent forward-looking initiatives from cropping up all around Istanbul... Amid challenging and often depressing times, it was revitalizing to seek out some positive, inspiring initiatives for the 2014 GOOD City Index . As it did with last year's inaugural list , the quarterly, U.S.-based magazine GOOD  again seeks to celebrate the "cities around the world that best capture the elusive quality of possibility" -- not the ones where everything is necessarily working right, but ones with a heartbeat of "creativity, hustle, and civic engagement....

Fascinating, frenetic, and often frustrating, Istanbul can sometimes seem like it’s defined by its unmet potential. With its young population and incredibly rich history, Istanbul should be a hotbed of innovation, but is unfortunately hampered by a lack of diversity, a vast wealth gap, and a political system that limits civic participation—as was plain to see during this past summer’s mass protests...  The quarterly magazine GOOD reached out this past fall to get my take on Istanbul for its " GOOD City Index ," a new feature highlighting "the cities that are emerging, the ones that are figuring out their growing pains or flourishing under the radar." The final piece, published in GOOD 's Winter 2013 issue under the headline "Celebrating Possibility," shines the spotlight on 20 up-and-coming cities, from Accra to Wellington. My writeup on Istanbul appears at number 7 on the index (n.b. I asked for the Bosphorus to be correctly identified as a ...