Investigation of urban transformation applications within the framework of transfer of property rights and development rights: The example of Trabzon

In today's world, the rapidly rising population of cities and the inevitable raise in the housing volume in parallel have deteriorative the physical construction of cities and led to the formation of city portions that lost their function over time with uncontrolled and non-planned urbanization and housing areas that are not resistant to disasters. Urban transformation practices have been started for the objectives of re-planning such areas, rehabilitating the historical buildings and their surroundings, and unraveled the characteristic features of the cities. However, in the urban transformation projects that have brought to the agenda for the purpose of solving the current problems and transfigure the ownership by their nature, some issues have ensued in the management of property and development rights and the distribution of the value raise resulting from the conversion. In this regard, it is crucial to investigate the applicability of the Transfer of Development Right (TDR) system, a widely used system in abroad for the point of compensating the limitations brought to ownership rights, which was actually within our statute in the 2000s but has not yet been fulfilled. The concept of TDR can be explained as the resolution of the development right, which cannot be used partial or exactly, from the ownership right and permitted its use in different area. Therefore, in this dissertation, with addressing the concepts of development rights transfer and urban conversion in details, the usability of the TDR system in urban conversion practices and the disquisitions of the advantages it would ensure were evaluated by using the urban conversion practices in Trabzon. As a result of the study, it was revealed that the urban conversion projects were carried out in cooperation with the Municipality and TOKİ and financed by the state. In this context, it can be said that a substantial profit of the TDR system is that it is a market-oriented and volunteer basis application tool that takes the currently out of use development rights into account and it will contribute to the notable lowering of the financial burden, especially the expropriation costs, on the management.