Integrating the Resilience Perspective into the Turkish Planning System: Issues and Challenges

Abstract

Within the last decade, resilience has become both a major planning framework and a development goal for cities and regions facing a plethora of problems in different fields and at different scales. This chapter aims to identify the challenges that await governments when they integrate a resilience thinking framework into their planning systems. The chapter first provides a short explanation on the significance of resilience planning and then outlines a structural model for incorporating the social, economic, political, and institutional requirements in resilience thinking in city and regional planning. Next, the chapter provides a short analysis of the Turkish planning system to reveal its inherent problems and the issues that are likely to be most challenging in a shift towards resilience planning. Finally, based on the provided analyses, the chapter provides a critical discussion on the challenges in operationalizing resilience planning in the Turkish context. The findings reveal that there is a need for restructuring especially in Turkey’s institutional and legislative framework to improve coordination and cooperation, to assure the use of scientific knowledge within the decision-making processes, and to actualize the praxes of participation and engaged governance.