A study on the preparation of block planning principles in land consolidation projects

Land Consolidation has become an important tool contributing to the development of rural regions around the world and has become rapidly widespread in our country in recent years. This process aims to give rural areas a new and permanent cadastral appearance as well as basic infrastructure systems. Block planning forms the basis of Land Consolidation projects. The effective applicability of block planning directly affects the project cost and the production cost that will last for years after implementation. For this reason, block planning should be prepared to be used for many years in the most appropriate way to the requirements and conditions of the site where the project will be carried out. When planning blocks in Turkey, factors such as roads, irrigation-drainage channels, land topography, soil properties, irrigation methods and business sizes must be evaluated together. Efficient and effective block planning can be achieved by taking these factors into consideration. However, when planning blocks in Land Consolidation projects, these factors are often ignored and new blocks are shaped according to the preferences of the implementers. Therefore, this study aims to investigate and determine the criteria for block planning in detail. The new block planning criteria will not only adapt agricultural infrastructure with technical measures and comply with technical and economic conditions, but will also increase project acceptability and contribute to rural development efforts due to the economic gains to be realized. In this study, a detailed literature study was conducted to determine the block planning criteria, and a survey was administered to Land Consolidation practitioners in the public and private sectors and academicians doing Land Consolidation related studies. Factors that are effective in block planning have been examined in detail under separate headings together with their direct and related factors, taking into account the relevant legislation. As a result of these studies, 15 new block planning criteria were determined. The new block planning criteria determined were examined in an Land Consolidation application field built by DSI, and a new block planning was made according to these criteria and both applications were compared. As a consequence of this comparison, it was discovered that in the new block planning distribution, the size of the enterprises increased while the number of parcels belonging to the enterprises declined dramatically.