Two Decades of Planning for Earthquake Resilience in Istanbul

Dedekorkut-Howes, Ayşın; Ay, Deniz; Demireş-Özkul, Başak

doi:10.4324/9781003038160-16

The Routledge Handbook of Planning Megacities in the Global South 2020

DOI: 10.4324/9781003038160-16

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Two Decades of Planning for Earthquake Resilience in Istanbul

Ayşın Dedekorkut-Howes¹,

Deniz Ay²,

Başak Demireş-Özkul³

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2021

2024

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Cited by 2 publications

References 17 publications

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Engineering, law, and the anticipated İstanbul earthquake

Kayaalp

2024

New Perspect. Turk.

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There is scientific consensus that an earthquake of a magnitude of at least 7 will soon occur on the North Anatolian Fault, which runs south of İstanbul. This earthquake would render one-fifth of İstanbul’s buildings uninhabitable, which means that approximately 200,000 buildings would be expected to suffer moderate or severe damage. As a part of preparedness for the anticipated earthquake, people in İstanbul are invited to have their buildings risk tested. This article, pivoting on cultural anthropology and science and technology studies, investigates how earthquake-proneness of buildings in İstanbul is technically and legally examined and determined. It ethnographically analyzes the risk assessments and demonstrates that the risk is enacted differently through distinctive engineering practices and legal regulations in different networks. When the two different risk assessment processes are examined in İstanbul, a building that is categorized as risky due to its earthquake vulnerability could be regarded as sturdy in the other assessment.

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Engineering, law, and the anticipated İstanbul earthquake

Kayaalp

2024

New Perspect. Turk.

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The strange case of earthquake risk mitigation in Istanbul

Ay¹,

Özkul²

2021

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As an aspiring global city, Istanbul is at the crossroads of capital, political struggle, and socioeconomic transformation. Unfortunately, Istanbul is also at the crossroads of major active fault lines. This paper analyzes earthquake risk mitigation planning for the megacity since the last big seismic catastrophe of the Marmara Earthquakes in 1999 that hit the region, including Istanbul. We use the concept of riskscape to explore the political and technocratic construction of seismic risk and how this implies different experiences of risk to investment portfolios, the state, and the ordinary people living in the city. Our empirical analyses focus on the "Istanbul Seismic Risk Mitigation and Emergency Preparedness Project" (ISMEP), launched as a World Bank project in 2005 and still ongoing as of 2020. We argue that the ISMEP project epitomizes the "strange case" of earthquake risk mitigation in Istanbul due to its organizational complexity, financial expansion over its lifetime, and progression as a megaproject sponsored by international development funding despite its contraction in institutional targets. Our findings suggest that this centralized and nontransparent earthquake risk mitigation approach in Istanbul creates a fragmented riskscape for the megacity. The earthquake risk continues to threaten millions of inhabitants' lives and livelihoods while making room for speculative real estate development.

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Two Decades of Planning for Earthquake Resilience in Istanbul

Cited by 2 publications

References 17 publications

Engineering, law, and the anticipated İstanbul earthquake

Engineering, law, and the anticipated İstanbul earthquake

The strange case of earthquake risk mitigation in Istanbul

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