Basic Concepts, Principles, and Approaches of Urban Policy and Politics

"According to the United Nations, taking the whole world into consideration, 30% of the population lived in the cities in 1950."

"USA considers a settlement as urban if it has a population of 2500 or more."

"From a historical perspective, cities are thought to emerge 5500 years ago in Mesopotamia, the Nile Valley, the Indus Valley and the Hoang-ho Valley (Frey and Zimmer, 2001: 26-27)."

"If we look at the history of urban policy, the spread of contagious diseases led to the emergence of the earliest forms of urban policies (Edwards and Imrie, 2015)."

“Someone studying urban politics needs to look into the cities and metropolises first.”

“In Britain, as the first industrial nation, it took only more than a century to complete social transformation from rural to urban (Further Reading titled “Urban Policy in Britain”).”

“Dunleavy (1982) offers five essential traditions in the analysis of cities: locational analysis, studies of systems of cities, socio-cultural, institutional, and finally political economy approaches.”

"In the English language, the word urban was used in the early 17th century for the first time (Short, 1996)."

“The field of Urban policy and politics is highly interlinked with other subfields such as urban sociology, urban economics, environmental studies, urban planning, and architecture.”

“Industrial capitalism began in Europe in the 18th century.”

“Two main principles of the design of local government need to be emphasized. Firstly, ultra vires principle limits municipal responsibilities to ones explicitly authorized by the central government. Secondly, general competence principle allows local governments to be valid authority everywhere, except the restricted areas defined by explicit central government law.”

“The motivations below have been behind the planning processes:

• aesthetics
• efficiency
• social equity
• maintaining property values
• environmental protection (Kaplan, Wheeler, and Holloway, 2004).”

“Throughout the countries, local governments, and institutions, there is a wide variety of social housing policies that ease, promote, and encourage investment on affordable housing projects. Some examples of these policies are; Land Banking, Mixed-Income Affordable Housing, and Tax Incentives.”

“If the government is involved in social housing, the shelter provided to people is called public housing.”

"In the late 19th century, developments in the field of transportation, railway networks in particular, paved the ground for suburban growth around the major cities."

"At three levels, urban life interacts with transport; long-distance (international, inter-regional), intra-regional, and transport within the city."

"Transportation developments helped cities in their becoming interchange hubs, manufacturing centers and getting a stronger position."

In the 20th century, emerging concerns of the urban environment that seek lower emission solutions and inclusive and accessible approaches are sprouting concepts such as "15-Minute City” movement, Transit-Oriented Development (TOD), or “First- Last Mile Connections.”

"Three basic concepts of the new urbanism movement are neighbourhood, district, and corridor appear as the key themes."

“Corridor is one of the basic concepts of the new urbanism movement. It is designed as the connector and separator of neighbourhoods and districts enabling an entrance to them. It is part of urban life featured by its continuity (Gottdiener, Budd, and Lehtovuori, 2015).”