Istanbul’s Resilience in Question: Resilience, Decision-Making Process, Planning Politics

Abstract

An important environmental issue related to planning is created by the political orientation of the government in Turkey.Especially in the new millennium, the government has focused on achieving economic growth and avoiding the global economic crises as its primary targets.These priorities resulted in efficiency-oriented planning policies in which the metropolitan city of Istanbul is the main field of operation because of its capacity to become a regional centre of finance in the global economy.In this respect, Istanbul is regarded to have the capacity of fuelling the economic boost because of its historic, strategic and environmental assets.The city has become a dynamic bundle of urban operations.Existing public areas such as parks, forests, seashores are subjected to land development; renewal projects transform deteriorated poor neighbourhoods into high income neighbourhoods or inner-city attractions for tourism or globally marketed business areas with high quality offices.Vacant land which is reserved as potential green space for new developments in the plan is given new functions with high densities.This paper attempts to present how local government is pursuing these ends and legitimizing its means by abusing the earthquake risks, and how planning regulations are bent in order to pave the road for foreign and domestic capital.These actions are discussed in relation to the typology of planning approaches and the question of resilience.