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The Role of Smart City Approach in
Sustainable Urban Planning Processes

It is seen that the mentioned approaches are essentially reflections of a
paradigm shift. It has been observed that the urbanization processes and the
traditional understanding of city management fails to meet the increasing
and diversifying needs due to the effects of global-scale externalities
such as globalization, neo-liberalism and the expansion of technological
opportunities. This paradigm shift requires the breaking of known patterns
on certain issues, such as: (a) resource use, (b) preservation – use balance, (c)
construction dynamics, (d) sustainable applications, (e) awareness of urban
users, (f) establishment of new urban networks, (g) changing priorities for
healthy, safe and liveable cities.
In this context, the search for innovative solutions has led to the emergence of
the concept of ‘Smart City’. Providing urban services to citizens with developing
technological opportunities, designing and operating infrastructure and
superstructure systems that do not need human intervention, establishing a
network structure for them, and creating a brand new urban vision through
governance provide important clues about the content of this concept (Bilici
and Babahanoğlu, 2018). The level of smartness of the city introduced by the
smart city concept, in which the different components are connected and
related to each other, is directly corresponding to the integration of technology
into urban life. In other words, the adaptation processes of urban residents to
digital infrastructure instruments are the key determinant of the degree of
intelligence. Based on this point, one of the most important goals of smart
city applications is to ensure the participation of urban partners in decision-
making processes (Örselli and Akbay, 2019). In this regard, smart applications
are rapidly becoming widespread in many cities around the world and new
projects continue to be implemented every day (Lara et al., 2016).
Taking into account the complex nature of urban life and problems, it is a very
difficult and long-term process to establish sustainability in urban areas with
its social, economic and environmental dimensions. The solutions developed
to overcome this difficult process incorporate important opportunities for
many aspects because they have a multifaceted and wide-ranging nature.
Strategic planning studies performed at the local level by municipalities in the
cities which widely use smart city applications, policies developed for urban
activities, emergency and disaster management can be given as examples
(Köseoğlu and Smith, 2018).
National Smart Cities Strategy and Action Plan (2020-2023) prepared by the
Ministry of Environment and Urbanization in 2019 addressed the top smart
city applications worldwide and in Türkiye. These examples can be listed as
follows (Ministry of Environment and Urbanization, 2019):

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