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The Resilient City Of The Future:
Esenler Nar Innovation District

the built environment, human mobility, changing socio-economic order, or various
political orders. The ability for self-organization refers to the capacity of a system to
organize itself without any influence or intervention from outside (Heylighen, 2002)
and the preparation of an environment for change. Transformability gains importance
when the existing economic, socio-political or ecological systems cannot renew
themselves (Walker et al, 2006). Adaptation to new conditions is possible only with
transformability, and it is possible to gain a relatively positive structure compared to
the past through innovativeness. In the light of all these statements, a framework
uniting internal dynamics (ecological, economic, social and spatial) provides a capacity
to deal with threats and issues systematically.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) developed
policies and applications that will increase the resiliency of cities and offers a
framework to deal with this issue. It discusses resiliency indicators under four main
headings, namely, economy, society, governance, and environment. The indicators
assess the resiliency of a city as follows:
In terms of society, the resiliency of a city depends on the easy access of people to
services provided by the city, the ability of people to have interactive communication
with each other, population density, social balance and clean atmosphere. In terms
of economy, it depends on the existence of various industries and business sectors in
the city, a dynamic economy to sustain growth, and the ability to support innovative
enterprises. In terms of governance, it depends on the clear and transparent operation
of the services provided, strategical and sustainable decisions made by decision makers
and governors, and the extent to which individuals play an efficient role in decision
support mechanisms through a pluralistic democracy. In terms of atmosphere, it
depends on the level of green areas in the city, a low level of construction areas, the
capacity to satisfy essential needs, the use of sustainable and innovative management
of natural resources, the ability to make decisions of land use with consideration of
ecosystem unity, and the clear and sustainable carbon emission goals (OECD, 2022).

A new and innovative planning approach must identify the main threats to
the urban system, determine the spatial and social vulnerabilities, how the
threats affect these vulnerabilities, and the adaptation capacity of the region
as well as critical thresholds. Additionally, political priorities must be identified.
Istanbul, a city in Türkiye which is both important and vulnerable in terms of
population, economy, and natural resources, must be approached with an
innovative planning approach. To this end, a local government aware of the
vulnerabilities of the city, Esenler Municipality has adopted an innovative
planning and design strategy, and started a design initiative to create a new
flexible and adaptive living area with a high level of resiliency. Murat Kurum,
the Minister of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change, announced
in his tweet dated Feb 11th, 2022 that Türkiye has been working vigorously

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