Tekirdağ province in the spatial planning and sustainability perspective

Tekirdağ province, which is Ancient Thrace land, granary, and a transfer point on the Marmara coast, has witnessed a growth and population increase that is rare in its recent history, has undergone a rapid change process and entered the 21st century with problems that strained its capacity and durability. The change, which can be considered as the historical breaking point in Tekirdağ, is the investments without infrastructure that started in the 1980s, gradually increasing the negative impact on agricultural lands and water resources, and pushing the carrying capacity of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. While the industrialization and urbanization process was reorganized in the form of factories on one side of the highways passing through fertile agricultural lands, and settlements with rapidly increasing population on the other side, it manifested itself with second houses made of concrete blocks on the coastal areas. Ergene River, which is clean enough to drink at its source, is mixed with underground waters in line with its flow as it is the discharge area of industrial wastewater and domestic wastes of Çorlu-Çerkezköy environment and harms marine ecosystems where it flows into the Aegean Sea. Ground water resources, which are a fresh water resource reserve and should be used last, are damaged by the water used by the industry and the water level is gradually going deep. While the expected 7 magnitude earthquake along the Ganos Fault on the Marmara Sea coast made itself felt by small earthquakes, extreme rainfalls, floods, storms, heat waves and rising coastal levels due to climate change paint a pessimistic picture for the future. While the processes of change accelerate and their effects increase in the physical environment of the province, the number of vehicles on highways is increasing; fuel storage areas are expanding; new organized industrial zones are being established; as the population increases, residential areas continue to expand. In this process, which operates in the form of a cause and effect relationship, cities are growing rapidly and their ability to be sustainable decreases to that extent. Policies and actions aiming to combat the processes that test the durability and competitiveness of Tekirdağ are far from being inadequate and holistic, since they are designed on the desk, leaving out the context of space and people. Short-term solutions such as the "Marmara Deep Sea Discharge" will lead to new destructions in aquatic ecosystems by moving wastewater to the distant sea depths, rather than creating permanent and effective changes. This study defends the necessity of a new planning process that focuses on the carrying capacity of ecosystems by criticizing the regional and provincial landscaping plans that are currently implemented in the province of Tekirdağ, which is the research area. The arguments have been shaped within the framework of the evaluation of the processes that impede the sustainability capability of the province in the goals, strategies and decisions of the 1/100.000 scaled Thrace Sub-Region Ergene Basin Revision Environmental Plan. Possible sustainability problems that the changes made in the environmental plan to date will create in terms of sustainability are also included in this framework. Although the environmental plans, whose decisions continue to be implemented at regional and provincial level, are reformist according to the existing master and implementation development plans prepared before them, they lack long-term proactive policies and practices against risk factors in the context of industrialization, population growth, urbanization and resource use. This situation makes the sustainability of Tekirdağ province questionable and harms the natural and cultural potentials that constitute its historical identity. Today, cities, with their increasing population, can be a problem center as well as a solution center in terms of technology, equipment and capital accumulation. In order to ensure Tekirdağ's ability to continue its economic development and competitiveness with sustainable planning and actions, physical environmental characteristics and human dynamics should be analyzed correctly and planning should be done in a holistic manner with a multidisciplinary approach. Planning should be built on a sustainable ground that prioritizes the rehabilitation of ecosystems, enables circular economy and supports green employment, by getting rid of industrial sector-oriented resource use and spatial organization patterns.