As an urban planning problematic culture and city

Space and culture relation or planning and culture relation are being evaluated bydifferent disciplines from different perspectives. However, planning, space and culturerelation has been discussed by few studies. Especially, there are not any studies, whichdiscuss faith?place?planning relation, in Turkey. Faith, evaluated as a component ofculture, discussed as identity problematic. Additionally, because of their implicitpolitical characters, space and place concepts have been discussed by urban policyperspective. Culture, faith and identity concepts have been evaluated with space,policy and human rights dimensions.Role of place, in terms of sustaining cultural identity, has been discussed by faithgroup's "place making" and "meaning making" practises. It has been discussed, cultureand place relation, in the field of ?faith?, ?sacred place? and ?place of worship?concepts, in this study. The importance of cultural identity phenomenon in the contextof human rights and for the sustainability of cultural identity what are the inevitablespatial and organizational components have been evaluated by the fieldworks andobservations in İstanbul and United Kingdom. Focus groups are Armenian Orthodox,Greek Orthodox and Alevi?Bektashis in İstanbul and Turkey origin Sunni faith groupsand Alevis in UK. With the evaluation of in?depth interviews and participantobservations, these five different religious group?s place making practises tried to beexplored in two different countries. Spatial adjustments of these groups, in order tosustain their cultural identity, have been analysed within their narratives anddiscourses by interpretive approach. This dissertation is a pioneer study to explorefocused faith group?s geography, in its field. This study is the first study that haS identified geographical distribution of Alevi?Bektashi culture in the selectedgeographies.This study is targeting to contribute the other disciplines with open discussionplatform. Planning can take an active and positive role in social issues, like identityconflicts, cultural rights struggles, establishing democratic society processes andlonging for democratic regime issues. In addition, it should have understood that placeis the inevitable component for cultural identity. Because of these reasons, thisdissertation seeks to contribute to exit out of the passive role of planning disciplineand profession.