Page 190 - Çevre Şehir İklim İngilizce - Sayı 4

Urban Transformation as a Tool to Protect From Disasters and
Post-Disaster Housing Project Examples

Almost all of the houses destroyed or severely damaged by disasters
today are projects that were either not built in spatially suitable areas or
were not built according to scientific procedures in terms of architecture and
materials. Considering that a large part of our country and cities are located
in the earthquake zone, millions of houses were built without engineering
services or according to today’s earthquake regulations, it stands out that
one of the most important elements of protection against disasters is urban
transformation. This study overviews the disasters occured in Türkiye, and
contains the examples for solving the problem by using qualitative content
analysis, focusing on the importance of urban transformation which is regarded
as the most appropriate solution.

2. A Brief History of Disasters in Türkiye

There are 31 types of natural disasters identified on Earth, and 28 of them
consist of meteorological disasters. Earthquakes, floods, landslides, rockfalls,
avalanches and fires are among the main disasters affecting our country
(AFAD, 2023). 10 Regulations prepared for the safe design and construction
of structures and published in various years have been put into practice
taking into account disasters such as floods, landslides. However, over time,
earthquakes have been addressed with priority among other disasters due to
their destructiveness and affecting large areas and also constituted the focus
of regulations (TBMM, 2021:121). Since the Regulation of 1962, flood and fire
disasters have also started to be dealt together with earthquakes for buildings. 3
90% of the casualties in disasters in Türkiye are caused by earthquakes,
while 10% are due to landslides, floods and overflows (General Directorate
of Land Registry and Cadastre, 2019). About 250 major earthquakes occurred
between 1900 and 2023 causing damage or loss of life (TBMM, 2023:89), and
138,594 people lost their lives in these earthquakes. The major earthquakes,
in terms of loss of life and severe damage, that occurred in Türkiye are
respectively; Erzincan earthquake in 1939, Marmara earthquake centered in
Gölcük in 1999, Van earthquake in 2011, Elazığ, Malatya and Izmir earthquakes
in 2020 (TBMM, 2021: 62).
The Marmara earthquake, which affected almost a quarter of the country’s
population, has been a devastation for the Turkish construction sector. A
total of 3.5 million houses were affected, including about 66 thousand houses
and 11 thousand workplaces with severe damage, 67 thousand houses and

3 In order to ensure the safety of structures against earthquakes in our country, 10 earthquake reg-
ulations have been published since 1940 to the present day. The first earthquake regulation was
published in 1940 after the 7.9 magnitude Erzincan Earthquake in 1939, which was recorded as
one of the major earthquakes of the century, under the name of “Italian Building Instruction for
Construction Activities in the Earthquake Zones” by being translated from the Italian Regulation.

Year 2 / Issue 4 / July 2023 179