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

Along with the temporary housing efforts initiated after the earthquake,
site selection and project studies for permanent housing have also been
started, and the Public Housing Administration, the General Directorate
of Construction Works and Emlak Konut REIT have been assigned for the
construction works. Approximately 650 thousand houses along with village
houses were planned to be produced in the region; and just after 15 days
following the earthquake, the tender was made for 4,304 houses after
the completion of any kind of soil surveys by taking into account the fault
lines and permanent houses were started to be built in Gaziantep, Hatay,
Kahramanmaraş, Adana, Kilis and Şanlıurfa (Presidency of the Republic of
Türkiye Directorate of Communications, 2023).
In the selection of residential areas, it was decided to move away from
the fault line by at least 500 meters and select the areas where the ground
structure is solid with high bearing power, usually rocky and limestone, and it
was agreed to build structures that will not exceed the ground floor plus 4 and
5 floors (TRT, 2023b).

5. Conclusion and Evaluation
It is known that a large part of the cities and the majority of the population
in Türkiye are under risk of disasters. The fact that 6-7 million out of
approximately 30 million houses are considered risky shows that a serious
urban transformation is needed in Türkiye (AA, 2020). This urgency becomes
even more essential in the cities such as İstanbul, İzmir and Kocaeli with dense
population and high risk of disasters. 400 thousand buildings (1.5 Million
households) are under the risk in İstanbul.
Finally, receiving a great number of applications in a short time for the “Half
of the payment belongs to the State” campaign initiated by the Ministry of
Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change primarily for İstanbul is of
substantial importance in terms of showing the public’s tendency towards urban
transformation. 270 thousand applications were received for the campaign in
a short time, which concern 1 million 20 thousand independent units. Within
the scope of the project, 750 thousand TL, which is half of the 1 million 500
thousand TL to be spent on the transformation of an apartment of 100 m will
2
be covered by the state as a loan and this money will be paid back on a 10-
year term. It is foreseen that a financial resource of around 280 billion TL will be
needed for this project between 2024-2026 (URL-1)

Year 2 / Issue 4 / July 2023 185