A solution to urban sprawl: Management of urban regeneration by smart growth

Uncontrolled and sprawling growth in physical space is one of the primary problems of metropolitan cities. Urban sprawl, which can be defined as the rapid peripheral growth of cities, is criticized in terms of leading problems such as occupying cultivated areas and environment, removing away many advantages provided by natural open spaces, increasing transport costs, and transforming city centers into decayed areas. Smart growth, which is one of the important agenda topics of planning, creates an opportunity in terms of determining reuse strategies and priorities of urban area. Smart growth refers readdressing of urban macroform and land use preferences by emphasizing economic and environmental dimensions of spatial organization. Smart growth involves indicators that can be used for all cities for ensuring social, economic and physical sustainability required by urban regeneration. This is an explanatory study suggesting use of smart growth principles in urban regeneration. This study is composed of two stages. At the first one, project specific matrix for smart growth is created by making literature investigation in sources dealing with international approaches and practice examples. At the second one, how the proposed development affects the surroundings is evaluated by project specifics matrix. By taking advantage of the matrix, positive or negative aspects of the project and the level of being successful is evaluated in terms of principles take advantage of compact building design, preserve open space farmland, natural beauty, and critical environmental areas as well as strengthen and direct development towards existing communities. Under these titles, following principles are also dealt with: convenience of the projects to high scale plan decisions; parallelism with preservation strategies and development strategies of the city; distribution of density decisions; compact design features; protection of existing areas, nature protection strategies, using brownfield or decayed areas, etc. Three urban regeneration projects, which are the biggest and the most important practices in Konya, the 6th metropolitan city of Turkey in terms of population, are selected for case study. The main determinant of selection of Konya is the fact that the metropolitan city has started to experience urban regeneration period quickly but with problems, and the city has unnecessarily sprawled. The most important difference of the study is the creation of a guideline which will evaluate the management of urban regeneration being applied in Turkey and its effects on the cities as a solution for urban sprawl.