An Urban Paradox: Urban Resilience or Human Needs

Abstract

Nowadays, metropolitan cities experience increasingly environmental problems as well as migration and urbanization pressure. As climate change, earthquake, flood, aridity and the last worldwide pandemic showed how cities are unprepared for these disasters. The ability of cities to cope with these disasters and survive depends on the existence and level of the city’s resilience to these disasters. Also, the change and transformation of social structure effects the process of adaptation. Generally, urban citizens with economic power who have to live in crowded cities have created their own living areas in the periphery of cities with the desire to live away from the city and in nature. The population increasing every day due to migration from the city centers, attractiveness of natural life lead to urbanization of natural areas as well as the transformation of landscapes. The aim of this study is to measure the urbanization pressure, which is one of the important factors of landscape changes and to determine the results of the pressure for the important areas for resilience. In the scope this, it is detected the pressure of urbanization on the area and examined the landscape changes between the years of 2000-2020 in Istanbul/Zekeriyakoy. Zekeriyakoy, when it was a village until the 1980s, has been in the process of a radical change especially since 1987 and it has become an important center of attraction especially after the Marmara Earthquake in 1999. Corine Land cover and Google satellite data have been used to detect changes in the research. The main outcome of this study is; the district, which was dominated by agriculture and forest areas until the early 1990s, is now under intense pressure to settle and if the transformation occurs at the same speed, especially agricultural areas will almost disappear. This study is important in terms of how the field has changed in the years and the problems that this change will cause for the future. In this context it can be said that the change, transformation and adaptation expected to occur with the concept of urban resilience cannot be considered separate from human and human welfare.