Page 219 - Çevre Şehir İklim İngilizce - Sayı 4

Sezayi Köse - Zeynep Ayan - Ebru Vural
Kübra Özcivan - Yeşim Koçdemir
1. Introduction

Cities are the structures that meet the housing needs of crowded
communities and allow them making economic, social and cultural exchanges,
create production and consumption networks and provide a much wider
range of offer areas compared to other settlements. The urban space shaped
by large human circulations throughout the history has faced with different
potentials and problems, especially with the technological developments
experienced in the last 150 years. The increase in the rate of urbanization
and the spread and growth of the urban population form as a result of the
migration of a certain population to urban space lead to some problems in
physical space, while causing insufficient social and economic reflections on
the crowded masses having the experience of living together. At this point,
urban transformation has become an economic and social tool that makes
the urban space healthy by primarily taking safety of life as a basis against
unhealthy construction, at the same time enriching and re-purposing the
functions in the urban space.
Another important factor that necessitates urban transformation is the risk
of disasters. Natural disasters have occurred as extraordinary movements at
different times in various parts of the world throughout history and have had a
significant impact on development, the use of public resources, employment
and economic growth. Along with globalization, in particular, the economic
consequences of a disaster occurring anywhere in the world have crossed
national borders and started to affect people in very distant countries (Akar,
2013:186-187). For this reason, the elimination of unhealthy structures that
pose a risk in cities before any disaster occurs will minimize losses of life and
property resulting after the disaster.
Considering statistics on natural disasters in Türkiye, it is seen that earthquakes
stand out as the one, among other disasters, with the greatest destruction in
terms of loss of life and property due to the unhealthy construction in cities.
76% of the damage occurring as a result of natural disasters in our country is
caused by earthquakes, 10% by landslides, 9% by floods and 4% by rockfalls,
while the remaining 1% is caused by other types of disasters. It is estimated
that the probability of an earthquake within 1 year between a magnitude of 6.0
- 6.9 defined as very strong earthquake that leads to destruction
is 63% while it is again 63% for the probability of an earthquake in each
five year with a magnitude of 7 or above defined as very destructive (JICA,
2004:8). Due to the earthquakes struck in last 60 years including the 2023
Kahramanmaraş earthquakes, more than 100,000 of our citizens lost their
lives with more than 200,000 injured, and more than 700,000 buildings were
collapsed or severely damaged.

208 The Journal of Environment, Urban and Climate