Urban and Regional Planning in Turkey

This book presents an overview of urban and regional planning in Turkey. It discusses the fundamental topics and contemporary issues in the field. The book is organized in two parts and it includes 14 chapters. Chapter 1 is designed as an introduction defining the framework of urbanisation in Turkey, and the evolution of urban planning providing a background for the remaining chapters. In Part I, contemporary issues of urban and regional planning in Turkey are covered (i.e., new route taken by regional planning, the role of the planner in the process of shaping the urban form of Turkish cities, the specific features of Turkish city centres, large-scale public investments and their effects on urban areas, urban growth of Turkish cities from an urban morphological viewpoint, and problems and recent planning discussions related to the conservation of archaeological heritage). The challenges faced by urban and regional planning in Turkey are discussed in Part II (i.e., major challenges in residential transformation, excess housing production and the future of housing markets, challenges posed by increasing (global) immigration and refugees, challenges due to integration of a resilience thinking framework into the planning systems, development and planning activities of settlements in hazard prone areas, and the current state of climate policy and governance). In the concluding chapter an overall assessment of the contemporary issues and challenges for urban and regional planning in Turkey is made with special emphasis on the last 15 years of the country. Discussions on the case of Turkey could be useful examples both for developed and developing countries.


Ö. Burcu Özdemir Sar? is an Assistant Professor in City and Regional Planning at Middle East Technical University (METU). She earned her Ph.D. degree (Dr.rer.pol.) in Spatial Planning at TU Dortmund, Germany in 2010. She conducted research projects about housing affordability and housing production. She is currently teaching urban economics and housing. Her research interests are urban studies, housing economics, housing policies, and residential reinvestment.


Suna Senem Özdemir is an Assistant Professor in City and Regional Planning at Çankaya University. She earned her Ph.D. degree in City and Regional Planning at Middle East Technical University (METU) in 2010. She is teaching regional planning, regional analysis and methods, statistics, and research methods. Her current research interests are regional planning, regional development and growth, regional methods and analysis, geography of knowledge, agglomeration, industrial clusters and industrial ecology. 


Nil Uzun is a Professor in City and Regional Planning at Middle East Technical University (METU). She earned her Ph.D. degree in Urban Geography at Utrecht University in 2001 with her dissertation on gentrification in ?stanbul. She participated in research projects about urban transformation in Ankara. Along with teaching urbanisation and urban sociology, she is doing research mainly on gentrification and residential transformation.