Page 188 - Çevre Şehir İklim İngilizce - Sayı 4

URBAN TRANSFORMATION AS A TOOL TO
PROTECT FROM DISASTERS AND POST-

DISASTER HOUSING PROJECT EXAMPLES

Hilmi TUTAR

ABSTRACT
The slums and illegal structures, which previously had the aim of simply acquiring
housing and did not receive engineering services, became structures that were not
resistant to disasters in the following years. In recent years, almost all of the houses that
were destroyed or severely damaged in the earthquakes and disasters are projects that
were either not built on suitable areas or were not built according to scientific methods
in terms of architecture and materials. The improvements made in the construction
legislation after the 1999 Earthquake and the new laws enacted to accelerate the urban
transformation after the Van Earthquake in 2011, increased the enforcement power of
the public authority and hundreds of projects were implemented in this context. The
fact that most of the existing building stock in our country is at risk against earthquakes
and the renewal of 6 - 7 million housing units with high risk of damage keeps the issue
of urban transformation on the agenda. In the next 5 years, the urban transformation
of 2 million residences in total, including 400 thousand units every year, is targeted.
However, the central and local authorities who face with the fact that a large part of
the housing stock in our country needs to be renewed, are also faced with a great
financing problem. The total expenditure on these projects to date is approximately
89,9 billion TL. in current value. Urban transformation, which is seen as the principal
solution especially in metropolitan areas such as İstanbul, Izmir and Kocaeli with dense
population, low quality of construction and high earthquake risk will take a long time
to be resolved with public projects, incentives and the sensitivity of the citizens after
the Kahramanmaraş earthquakes, but significant progress has been taken. One of
these applications is the project named “Half of the Payment belongs to the State”,
which is planned to be implemented first in İstanbul and then throughout the country.
270 thousand applications were received for the project, which concern 1 million 20
thousand units in İstanbul. Within the scope of this project, first it is aimed to transform
200 thousand housing units on-site, with the support of the state on voluntary basis.
While this expresses the determination of the public authority, it shows that an
effective urban transformation process has been initiated against disasters and that
the public and citizens also believe in it.
This study is carried out in order to deal with the damages caused by disasters in
Türkiye, the importance of urban transformation which is one of the effective solutions
against these damages and the housing projects implemented after disasters.

Keywords: Urbanization, Housing, Urban Transformation, Disaster, Population.

Year 2 / Issue 4 / July 2023 177