Introduction

ISOCARP is proud to announce a Young Planning Professionals’ workshop (YPP) in Kocaeli, Turkey between 19 and 25 March 2022. The YPP Program is a crucial component of ISOCARP’s dedication to promote and enhance the planning profession and commitment to facilitate knowledge for better cities with the young generations. The Kocaeli YPP Workshop, ‘Change for Resilience . Resilience for Change’ intends to discuss the concept of resilience through a transformation of urban public space, which can become a critical tool for a resilient city and society. It will be organised in collaboration with the Kocaeli Metropolitan Municipality, Marmara Municipalities Union, and the ISOCARP Institute, Centre for Urban Excellence.

Theme of the Workshop

Today, cities face multiple and often interrelated global problems such as natural disasters, climate change, biodiversity loss, wars, forced migrations, economic crises, water crisis, food crisis, and pandemics, in addition to disasters such as earthquakes. These problems become even more profound when combined with current urbanization practices and it becomes crucial to focus on the “resilient city” approach to tackle these challenges. With the help of this approach, cities can maintain their resilience in the face of risks, adapt to changes and develop their flexibility against predictable and unpredictable futures of cities and societies. Without a doubt, ensuring holistic and inclusive urban resilience is a compelling challenge itself since this means providing an adaptation process for all segments of society, especially vulnerable groups, to the new conditions while creating solutions to different problems that constantly evolve.

Resilient cities interact strongly with every component of urban and social life, such as production and consumption networks, population and demography, urban ecosystem, institutional organizations, and urban design. With this in mind, this workshop intends to discuss the concept of resilience through a transformation of urban public space, which can become a critical tool for a resilient city and society. With this respect, the present workshop aims to redesign and refunction an old Fair Area -in the center of Kocaeli- that lost its function recently due to constructional insecurities. Via this workshop, this semi-closed area will be turned into an open public space that regards the vulnerabilities, considers the needs, and embraces the diversity of the area. In this manner, the new function will improve the quality of life and health of its residents, protect the biodiversity of the environment, contribute to the transformation of the surrounding environment, and last but not least, create a resilient open public space that is ready for the global and local crises and challenges. In other words, this area that has to alter in need of being more resilient can also be a foundation of a more resilient city ready for changes.

With this respect, the workshop’s theme has been defined as Change for Resilience, Resilience for Change – with a call to present future imperatives for a resilient city that meets the current needs of the city, improves the quality of life, protects and develops ecological values, and contributes to the transformation of the environment of the project areas with holistic approaches.

Case study area – Kocaeli International Fair Land

Located next to the Izmit Gulf and a wetland, the case area, which had been used as a International Fair Area until 2020, was surrounded by open spaces of a wetland under natural protection, a landfill site restored in 1996. With its diverse functions, the area is already a home for human and non-human mobilities and hosts more than 160 migratory bird species. The area which was put into service in 1998, was used as a logistics center during the 1999 İzmit (Kocaeli or Golcuk) earthquake – one of the major and most destructive earthquakes of Turkey’s history. All of the open areas around the fair building were used as temporary earthquake residences. These areas later served as an open car park for the Fair. It has hosted many events for the last 11 years including Book Fairs, Industrial Fairs and Children Festivals. Before the construction of the Fair, the site was a riverside wetland, and the water passing through the site made a long delta in the coastal part. After the interventions to the stream in the north and the construction of the artificial channel system, the shape of the coastal part has been altered. Unfortunately, the rapid industrialization and migration process that started in the 1980s created difficult problems for local governments to solve. One of them is the domestic waste storage problem. Some local governments have implemented wild storage landfill applications in the early 1980s to the first half of the 1990s. Although there is no record of the total storage, it is known that the case area remained in the wild storage landfill area. Eventually, the sanitary landfill site was established in 1996 and the area was turned into a protected zone.

Today, this part of the coast consists of wetlands and natural protection zones and hosts migratory birds in migration seasons. The number of bird species observed in the Izmit Bay Wetland in the last 7 years recorded in the database (bird bank) is approximately 164. Among these, there are bird species at a very high risk of extinction in nature and under protection on a global scale. 102 of them are wetland birds and more than half are migratory bird species. Hundreds of species of ducks feed and shelter in the coastal part and islets where freshwater and saltwater mix in the Izmit Gulf Wetland. The area is intended to protect its role as a Fair and Exhibition Area function in the latest regional and local plans, together with a Building Restricted Area restriction. The West is planned as the Central Business District (CBD) and the Small Industrial Area is in operation, while the East is the Wetland and Buffer Zone. There is a Commercial Area and a Municipal Service Area (Fire Brigade) in the north. This commercial area together with its shopping malll is an important attraction since it is close to the city centre and designed as open space. In the south, there are Accommodation and Entertainment Facility, Park and Recreation Areas.

At present, some part of the closed space of the Fair Area has been demolished in 2020 for safety reasons. As it was well understood that the building was not resistant to shocks such as earthquakes the demolition process started for the Fair Area. Kocaeli has had to struggle with the unplanned urbanization brought by rapid industrialization and migration for many years. In this context, the city does not want to be referred to only as the industrial capital. Kocaeli, has a vision of becoming a ‘science city’ using high technology and a vision of becoming a ‘tourism city’ that uses its natural potential in harmony with the environment. The new Fair Area will be constructed in another location in the city, and the existing fair area will be refunctioned and redeveloped in parallel to the city’s needs. According to the Land Use study prepared in 2020, while this area can meet the city’s needs, it can also contribute to Kocaeli in becoming a healthy, livable, and resilient city with its potentials such as reducing the urban heat island effect and flood risks.

If you have any questions regarding your application, please contact Zeynep Gunay, ISOCARP Board, Director YPP via gunay@isocarp.org.

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