Implementation Difficulties in the Planning of Istanbul Area: Experience of Kartal Transformation Project

Istanbul has grown in an uncontrolled way with unplanned and illegal buildings induced by industrialization and migration and turned into an 'overgrown' city that hosts a number of urban problems since 1950s. With a view to stopping this adverse development and ensuring planned and healthy development of and raising the living quality in the metropolitan city through planning actions, an Environmental Arrangement Plan of Istanbul was drawn up through a collaboration between the Istanbul Metropolitan Planning Centre (IMP) and the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IMM) during 2005-2009. In order to attain the goals established in the plan, some projects were chosen and tried to be implemented. One of most important projects developed for the eastern side of Istanbul is the project for transformation of the industrial area in Kartal into a Central Business District (CBD). One objective of the project is to create a new centre in the eastern part of the metropolis and thus reduce the daily commutation between the eastern and the western parts of the city as well as the heavy traffic through the strait crossing. Another aim is to redirect the capital and construction pressure which is concentrated on the metropolis to the wings. In this paper, I, as a person who took part in the planning work as an executive and performer, basically intend to evaluate the competition for and the planning process of the "Kartal urban transformation project" that has been proposed in accordance with the aforesaid goal as established in the Istanbul environmental arrangement plan and to discuss the attitude of the professional organizations against the plan from the points of the "public benefit, principles of urbanization, and principles of planning."