Page 20 - Çevre Şehir İklim İngilizce - Sayı 4

The Place of Urban Transformation in National Planning:
The Case of The Spatial Strategic Plan of Türkiye

started to increase and the transformation became a project-based (Özkan
and Türk, 2016; Tasan-Kok, 2008), a dynamic process (Tarakçı and Türk, 2020).
Due to the effects of the 1999 Marmara Earthquake, urban transformation
also began to be used as a tool for reducing disaster risks during the same
period (Daşkıran, 2015; Genç, 2008). After including the strategic planning
approach in 2010 and strategic spatial planning approach in further periods
in Türkiye’s planning system officially, urban transformation intervention
methods have started to be addressed in the scope of this approach. Urban
transformation began to be discussed with its socio-economic, social and
ecological variables instead of solely improving the physical conditions, and
the necessity of inclusive and participatory processes in urban transformation
interventions was put forward.
As seen across the world, the planning system in Türkiye is changing from
traditional planning approach to the spatial planning approach. The scope of
the planning system in Türkiye covers the national plans, regional plans, local
plans and special purpose plans. National and regional plans, unlike other types
of plans, are prepared within the scope of both spatial and socio-economic
planning. Looking at the place of urban transformation phenomenon in the
planning system in Türkiye, it is seen that it is at the strategy and policy level for
national plans while it is at the spatial level as for regional development plans in
regional scale, environmental layout plans and master development plans and
implementation zoning plans in local scale. On the other hand, decisions taken
at the spatial level for urban transformation, regardless of the scale, are made
depending on the plan notes rather than plan decisions when moving to the
implementation stage (Özkan and Türk, 2016). In addition, since the planning
system in our country is at a transition period, the place of urban transformation
in the planning system is also changing, but it has not yet been fully definite.
This transition process led to the formation of a hybrid planning approach, in
which both traditional and spatial strategic planning system features are seen
together, especially in urban transformation applications that have been realized
since the 2000s, the years when spatial strategic plans became widespread in our
country (Gürsoy, 2015). This situation causes urban transformation applications
to produce certain results deviating from their purpose and makes it difficult to
solve the problems encountered during the implementation phase.
In order to evaluate urban transformation on a national scale, first of all,
how urban transformation is handled in upper-scale plans and studies has
been examined. First of all, looking through the Urbanization Council held in
2009, it is observed that 10 themes were identified and urban transformation
stands out as one of the prominent themes in this context. In this regard,
the main emphasis was determined as increasing the space and quality of
life of settlements and strengthening the economic and social structures of

Year 2 / Issue 4 / July 2023 5