Abstract

Urban design throughout the world, is considered as a field of compromise between urban planning and architecture and as a tool that directs the urban development process. This article emphasizes the impact of the lack of definition of the implementation tools on the underdevelopment of urban design in Turkey. In recent years, especially in Istanbul, large-scale urban regeneration and renewal projects are not dealt within a holistic planning approach. They have issues in integrating with each other and the rest of the city. In this article, the Zeytinburnu Urban Regeneration Project, one of the urban projects developed in Greater Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality’s Istanbul Metropolitan Planning and Urban Design Centre (IMP), is evaluated in terms of the place of urban design projects within the Turkish planning system in order to question this approach in the planning system. Zeytinburnu reflects the average state of Istanbul’s built-up environment in terms of its physical conditions, the state of its building stock and legal status, together with earthquake damage risk. Therefore, it has been selected as the case study area. In contrast, the Hamburg-HafenCity Urban Regeneration Project has been selected in order to establish the urban planning-design-project relationship, and to analyze the place and significance of this relationship within the planning hierarchy. This project will expand the city centre by 40% and create a new centre which reflects a strong port character. Although their main aims differ, the two case study projects have provided insight for comparative evaluation in the planning system in terms of reorganization of a problematic urban area.

Key words: Urban design, urban project, planning system, planning implementation, planning process.