Urban Waterfront Revitalization Pursuit in Izmir Port District

Adnan Kaplan

Ege (Aegean) University Faculty of Agriculture Department of Landscape Architecture (TR)

Planning and management of coastal landscapes have considerably stepped up their involvement in GI-based projects since traditional or ad hoc (urban) planning outputs are unable to address some complicated but often competing challenges over coastal environments. Such pursuits infer that a well-defined planning and management process, particularly in and around urban coastal domain, should basically review existing land-use decisions and subsequently introduce the waterfront revitalization concept within the context of a comprehensive urban development or regeneration program.
Izmir as a coastal metropolitan city, adjacent to Aegean (Ege) Sea, is opening up the western world through its port region which is close to the city centre. This strategically important region covers an area of 550 ha. consisting of the harbour precinct, industrial and commercial zones, build-up zones and open spaces along the bay. However, the region has frequently failed to respond increasing commercial navigation demands with its improper management, infrastructure and transportation services.
To compete with these challenges over the region, Izmir Metropolitan Municipality launched an international urban design project competition in 2001 that might allow introducing a wide variety of creative scenarios with the aim of establishing new city centre as well as enhancing waterfront revitalization concept. Some projects regarding conservation and management of natural and cultural landscape features and evaluating GI data accurately have been mostly welcomed and awarded in the screening period. The competition has conceptually resulted in radical planning and design interventions in and around the region, among which urban physical structure including transportation mode and open space network along the bay, and socio-economic dynamics could be regenerated as well. The region was then being projected as a central and mixed-use district with tourism, recreational and commercial facilities such as yachting and ferryboat services. Some awarded, creative and GI-based outputs of this competition have been used to prepare the regional development plan of this area, in scale 1/5000. But, there are some deadlocks such as purchasing of some privately owned properties for public interest, in implicating the plan. The future of the region is nowadays hotly debated in Metropolitan Development Planning and Management process.
The objective of this study is to introduce and evaluate the recent planning and management experiences over Izmir Port District within the context of both waterfront revitalization and urban regeneration subjects.