I had traveled to Buca and İzmir’s Dokuz Eylül University Tınaztepe campus and met with Assistant Professor Şebnem Gökçen Dündar from the faculty of architecture, department of city and regional planning. She was so kind as to share her latest research with me. I admit that I am a great admirer of this Aegean port city and hope that my comments are interpreted as proactive reflections, not undue finger-pointing. İzmir’s charms can be found in abundance, but I somehow sensed that today’s city lacks a certain forward-looking vision. It needs a regenerative makeover and would greatly benefit from an improved infrastructure. If one were not in place already, the city would surely need a development master plan -- I shall return to this point.I am a regular visitor to İzmir, which in former times was known as Smyrna, and greatly enjoy its flair. What always struck me as a city with a fascinating mix of old and new -- and extremely enterprising, welcoming people -- at the same time reminded me of the traps that a municipality, any municipality, could all too easily fall into. I am talking about attempting to please the electorate by engaging in over-the-top building and construction work. Every Turkish mayor looks good when cutting the ribbon to inaugurate a new stretch of road, and the same is, of course, true for almost any other European (inner) city. However, moderation is a rare virtue and unfortunately İzmir’s elected officials have repeated the same mistakes its European neighbors made in the 1960s and 1970s, albeit some years later: too many flyovers, anonymous apartment blocks fast turning into ghettos and dual-lane access roads leading right up to the very city center, contributing to immense congestion and pollution.
My initial concerns can be summed up as follows: How can İzmir regain its cosmopolitan status? Urban development occurs according to today’s national politics despite the fact that there is a historical dimension city planners must take into account, too. In other words, our cities are assigned different roles during different historical periods.
İzmir’s five phases of urban development
In “The rise of culture and fall of planning: successes and failures in adoption of new routes for culture-led regeneration, the case of İzmir, Turkey,” Professor Dündar divided İzmir’s measurable past urban development into five periods. I briefly introduce her key findings here:
Pre-republican period: İzmir was a cosmopolitan place, a gate to the West with more than 10 theaters. The city was about to embark on its road to modernization; it hosted its first nationalist architectural movement. There was intra-regional transportation and investments in its railroad system and port, ready to ship raw materials to European customers; we detect the establishment of a services sector with banks, insurance companies, newspapers and posting facilities; the city played host to Levantines, Jews, Greeks and Armenians, many living here as foreign merchants.
Republican period (1923-1948): There were structural transformations based on the (new) republican ideology: “Erasing the past” became a buzzword, and in addition, the city witnessed early modernism in contemporary “Western izmir,” including a brand new architectural understanding. There was, of course, the need to rebuild the city after the 1922 fire, which had devastated almost three-quarters of it.
Liberal period (1948-1960): Employment, including in the agriculture sector, was good. İzmir’s urbanization process continued as well as a related increase in migration. A further side effect was early squatter settlements in the more peripheral areas.
Planned period (1960-1980): The fourth phase was all about institution building and a rapid development of inner-city industrialization. The year 1973 saw the first İzmir Master Plan, which was based on a linear layout in a north-south direction; intense industrial development became the order of the day, and foreign investments poured into the (still) bustling city. There was an increased need for housing, which resulted in the infamous “uninterrupted walls of buildings,” which began to dominate the city’s spatial appearance; lawmakers passed the Condominium Act, resulting in a further rise in population density via a related increase in building heights, ultimately leading to overcrowding.
Neo-liberal period (from 1980 onward): The development of collective consumption areas -- until then not available in Turkey -- began in this final, open-ended period covered by her research. İzmir engaged in slum reclamation, revision plans, mass housing and de-industrialization but also promoted the beautification of some of its more prestigious areas. There was, however, a conflict between politicians and NGOs with regard to how to host so-called mega development projects.
The 2001 Urban Design Idea Competition
I was then able to study two important documents related to İzmir’s more recent past: First, a design competition from 2001 about urban development and, second, the 2006 Master Plan currently in the process of being implemented. The International Urban Design Idea Competition for İzmir from May 2001 was organized by the İzmir Metropolitan Municipality and aimed “to obtain preliminary ideas for the development of urban space and architectural character of the İzmir Port District, to enhance the contemporary image of the city and create a new city center on the port area in the [interest of the] emerging international status of İzmir.”
The municipality, according to their own documentation, had realized that “the urban areas surrounding the site had been developed partly through local plans, partly in a haphazard way, and gradually became poor urban residential quarters with a rather ugly physiognomy.” Professor Dündar stated that the plan from 2001 was merely a “city center master plan,” targeting only one of the development areas that five years later would became part of the 2006 Greater İzmir Master Plan. The 2001 plan had meant to relocate the port, create a new shoreline and construct a pleasure/cruise liner port similar to but probably even bigger than in neighboring Kuşadası. The plan was not put into practice though, and the port was not relocated.
The 2006 Master Plan
The year 2006 saw the adoption of “A Master Plan for İzmir/İzmir Kentsel Bölge Nazım İmar Planı,” detailing urban-region development within five decentralized areas then to be divided and connected at the same time by a network of mandatory “green belts.” Its major aim is to establish proximity, foster localization and encourage cooperation between the various local, regional and national administrative and policy-making actors. According to Professor Dündar, the 2006 Master Plan finally forced the newly founded İzmir Development Agency (İZKA) and the local provinces to work together for a common good. However, summing up her research, she said that even the 2006 Master Plan was once more based on national policy-making requirements, albeit this time being very beneficial for İzmir and the region.
I came to the conclusion that Turkey needs more “windows to the world,” all the way from the Aegean coast up north to its Black Sea shores and south again to the Syrian border, and İzmir is perfectly able to become the role model for similar ventures. Conversely, the world needs more gateways to the “real” Turkey, which, in my opinion, is an entirely different and perhaps even more fascinating country once you are away from the sunshine belt, and it is İzmir once more that can successfully carry out this task. If İzmir manages to renew its pledge to be Turkey’s most cosmopolitan city, chances are İzmir will attract many more visitors as well as businesspeople. Yet it remains to be seen whether adequate care will be taken of environmental concerns and more general quality of life issues during the execution of the 2006 plan. Less construction, less unfinished bridges, more park-and-ride facilities and avoiding the creation of inner-city (or peripheral) areas of social conflict are only some of the many issues that should become integral parts of these efforts.
