‘Strategic Plan’ and ‘Environment Plan’ in Turkey in the Context of a Question: “Can ‘Environment Plan’ Be Combined to ‘Strategic Plan’ to Get a New Planning Type Named ‘Strategic Spatial Planning’ in Turkey?”

Abstract

In recent decades, new planning approaches have been applied to spatial planning field in the world. Rapid transformation of the world’s new socio-economic organization particularly in urban areas and traditional planning methods were criticized because they remain insufficient in front of the new obstacles and facts. In this case, Strategic Spatial Planning approach appeared in planning field. Besides this, Turkey does not have proper planning system in terms of the integrity of spatial planning; therefore, there are many problems with regard to determination of the metropolitan regional development strategies. In Turkey, Strategic Plans include existing situation analysis, future strategies, vision, policies as in the Regional Plans and this helps to make criticism for Turkish experiences: Strategic Plans are lacking of spatial proposals and remain only as written documents. On the other hand, ‘Environment Plan’ exists in the hierarchy of Turkish planning system as an upper scale blueprint plan including strict spatial proposals similar to the ones in each scale of Master Plans and with its policies. Thus, a critique stands as ‘Environment Plan’ has many problems in terms of its overlapping scale and boundary with municipal Master Plans; and this plan has been still discussed about which actors take part in planning, how to establish planning-implementation relationship and what the content of the plans will be. Consequently, in this study, the hypothesis will be the unification of two perceptions of above mentioned planning types in Turkish planning practices: combination of the concept of ‘Strategic Plan’ with ‘Environment Plan’ to get ‘Strategic Spatial Plan’ concept. In other words, in Turkish planning practice, both Strategic Planning’ and ‘Environment Plans’ have problems and the discussion will be carried out in the context of the question of why there is a need for such unification.