A suggestion on a theoretical model for distributing information to public in urban regeneration projects

Urban regeneration is an extensive and integrated act aiming at providing solutions for the economic, social, physical and ecological problems in the city and therefore it has to be carried out with the participation of various associations and with all of the stakeholders. Certainly, community is the primary stakeholder in urban regeneration process, the main goal of which is to provide solutions for society and city. Therefore it is inevitable that all sectors of the society should be informed regarding the process. The inhabitants of the regeneration project area should always have the right to know the services to be secured for their use and the qualities of those services; and they also should have right to express their opinions on the future. In current implementations, community dissatisfactionis mostly due to the fact that the regeneration works are not defined site-specific and community-specific and besides, due to the lack of a participatory approach. As a result of this, projects sometimes might not accomplish their goals and legal actions might cause waste of time and economic loss. In urban regeneration projects, one of the factors needed for the accomplishment of the goals of the project is the project manager's success in distributing information to property-right holders. Therefore, this study has focus on the communication process with right holders, one of the stakeholders of the project, within the context of "project communication management." The study consists of an implementation based on a contextual infrastructure and fieldwork. The contextual infrastructure is created by literature review, web site reviews and participant observations. Implementation part is comprised of two different samples, namely project coordinators and right holders of İzmir Kadifekale Urban Regeneration Project. Study first explains the location, demography and sociocultural and socioeconomic characteristics of the district, then covers the reasons and process of the project, touches upon the academic studies regarding public information works and then analyzes and interprets the data related to the survey. Having benefited from qualitative and quantitative research methods together, the study aims at obtaining complementary and mutually explanatory data from both methods All the data had been imported into SPSS software and analyzed statistically. The quantitative analysis provides percentage distribution for the purpose of understanding the sample (introduction of the date). Binary analyses (cross tabulation) is used in order to examine the relations among variables, one-way analysis of variance to understand whether or not there is a difference in between, and correlation analysis to reveal whether or not there is a relation among variables. In this study, I used qualitative analysis first to divide the data into meaningful parts and then to consolidate them. I named and coded the obtained parts, subsumed the codes under categories, and then entered the data. In conclusion, the study includes numerical data and statistics to emphasize oral and qualitative analyses; scrutinizes the public information process approaches of the community and project coordinators; define the variables influencing the process and interprets the problems and relationship networks developed through the process. Based on the data and analyses in question, it provides a theoretical model showing the basis on which the "public information distribution" is shaped; then discusses the findings and raises suggestions for new studies. The most important finding of the study is that, to be successful, a regeneration project should be designed taking into account, first and foremost, the lifestyle of the community, its ways of relations with the space, its perception and evaluations towards the regeneration project, and its forms of work and subsistence. If the community has lost its "trust" in the project coordinators the project should regain this trust, it should run an information process and ensures the participation of the community.