Evaluation of urban residental areas with the ecological planning framework: The case of Meram district in Konya

The development of economy and technology has caused a rapid growth of cities, which has led to change their development patterns. In order to meet the needs of the growing population, the cities that grow by sprawling cause the loss of agricultural lands in their environment, on one hand. Due to the rise in the individual use of vehicles, carbon footprint increases and causes the climate change, on the other hand. Hence, preserving limited natural resources and transferring them to future generations has gained an increasing significance, when sustainable urbanization approaches have become necessary in order to mitigate the environmental damage caused by uncontrolled and rapid urban development. Simultaneously, sustainable cities are the places, where the future generations will meet higher livability through healthy living environments. Thus, sustainable urbanization movements and approaches such as Smart Growth, Green Urbanization, New Urbanism and Ecological Planning, which have been launched in various countries have spread around the world. In addition to establishment of eco-cities, many countries has launched local programs that provides to implement the principles of sustainability and ecological planning through participation in their present urban areas. These quests of sustainability approaches in localities focuses on the neighborhood units. This thesis study reviews and examines the approaches for sustainability in urban areas and sustainable urbanization as well as their principles on urban growth and form. Then, this study focuses on the ecological planning, which constitutes the common point of the examined approaches and includes the planning principles and implementation policies. In this context, the aim of the study is to investigate how the existing urban areas, which have been built with the urbanization process in Turkey, can be transformed in accordance with the goals and principles of eco-urbanization. The principles of eco-urbanization aim to provide a better quality of life for all city inhabitants and make cities more coherent and sustainable with green infrastructure in order to develop a lifestyle in harmony with nature. In this framework, this study examines the eco-city examples in various countries in the world and in Turkey, when it searches for the principles in eco-cities and in the efforts of transforming existing cities into ecological urban areas. Moreover, the study investigates various criterion and certification systems that are developed and implemented in diverse countries such as LEED, BREEAM, CASBEE and Building For Life systems. The findings of the study, which include the principles and models for planning sustainable and ecological cities, are assumed to contribute to urban planning processes and policy makers for the implementation of eco-city projects and transformation of urban areas toward sustainable and ecological directions in Turkey. For this purpose, this thesis evaluates various housing environments in the Meram district of Konya according to their performance for the principles of eco-urbanization that are developed in this study. The selected housing areas were usually developed in the building-blocks as local communities, but they differ according to their characteristics and density such as gated settlements, housing estates and detached housing settlements. For performance evaluation, the study used 29 measures that are classified in three categories as environmental, physical and mobility (transportation). Then, the selected pilot areas evaluated whether and how their urban forms, design characteristics and life-styles meet the ecological performance criteria. The data used in this study included the urban layout plans obtained from local municipality of Meram district, satellite images, field observations and assessments and face-to-face interviews with the people live in the pilot areas. As a result of the analysis, certain findings are obtained on the applicability of the ecological urbanization principles in the building-block scale. Accordingly, none of the pilot areas has met the ecological planning principles. Despite, the housing-environs that encompass high-rise buildings and in the form of communities have met most of the criteria due to their compact forms and use of public transport. These communities seemed to perform the ecological environs in case of managing their public spaces and car parks according to ecological principles. On the other hand, the management system of the gated-communities with low-rise buildings were more sensitive to ecological waste management. Moreover, the communities that were built as parcel-based apartment buildings could not meet the ecological criteria due to the reasons like insufficient open-green spaces. In conclusion, providing the implementation of ecological planning seems to be possible in case of regarding the differences in the house and building-block typologies. Thesis study presents suggestions including the measures and policies to develop green certificate systems for urban areas.