Page 222 - Çevre Şehir İklim İngilizce - Sayı 4

Urban Transformation in Istanbul Within the Scope of Disaster
Preparedness

Fires caused great destruction in the city due to the wooden structures
and narrow roads making up the urban texture of the period, and Western-
style reforms revealed themselves especially in the process of rebuilding the
neighbourhoods that were burned down by the fires that often broke out in
those days. By making partial interventions into the urban texture with the
Western-style regulations, the re-planning of burned areas, the expansion of
roads and the opening of new roads, the construction of flamboyant buildings,
the desire to beautify the city through zoning were regulated by laws (Denel,
1982; as cited. Çetin, 2012: 91).
On the other hand, various housing textures also emerged, which were
formed by new social structures along with the new economic relations in the
city with the developing port trade and the population coming from the lands
lost by the Ottoman Empire. In the port cities such as İstanbul, in particular,
there has been a period when the residential areas differed according to the
change in the nation-based differentiation in housing areas and the income
status (Tekeli, 1998: 45).

2.2. The Period Between 1923 - 1950
Within the scope of the urban planning studies started in the first years of
the Republic, the construction process of new zoning plans in İstanbul was
initiated with the new Municipal and Health Laws enacted in 1930 and Henri
Prost was invited to İstanbul to carry out the planning studies (Tekeli, 2013:133).
In those years, urban space started to be shaped with the re-arrangement
of burned areas that were destroyed in the pre-Republican period to make
them liveable again, creation of large green spaces and squares in the city,
launching the construction of apartments, tram connections built to establish
connections with the inner parts of the city that are dispersed (Tekeli, 2013:
138).
The economic and social changes experienced in the world along with the
Second World War caused changes in our country as well, and as a result of the
increasing production activities in İstanbul, there was a rush for the migration of
the rural population to cities since the first years of the Republic, and the housing
needs of the new population clustered in the cities became apparent (Sağlam,
2016:265). The illegal construction which, at first, aimed at meeting the need for
housing, turned into a commercial activity, and then neighborhoods consisting
of single dwellings were established due to the increasing migration movement.
During this period, as a result of the inability to meet the need for housing in
response to the increasing population in cities in Türkiye, the phenomenon
of “slums” emerged with the 1940s and began to be discussed as a problem
(Sağlam, 2016:268).

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