City, Urbanization and Urban Policy

While 29.61% of 2.6 billion total world population lived in cities in 1950, 56.2% of 7.8 billion total world population lived in urban areas in 2020 (Statistics Times, 2021). This means an over 90% increase in the total urban population in the world in 70 years.

Cities are important because financial and economic activities, specialized labor, transportation, and entertainment opportunities among others are agglomerated in these urban areas.

The major challenge in urban governance and policy-making is to manage areas and urban growth for the benefit of the city and its people. It is also important to have political and institutional structure and support, financial resources and capacity to implement policies consistently and govern urban areas, life, and growth successfully.

Cities first started to emerge in Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium BC and then in other parts of the Middle East, Egypt, South Eastern Anatolia, South Asia, and China, called the first urban revolution.

During the emergence of the modern industrial city, the most important factors were the industrial revolution, mechanization in agriculture, the collapse of the feudal order, migration, urbanization and urban growth, and the development of capitalism and the capitalist class in the Western world.

According to 1924 Village Law numbered 442 defines settlements or living areas with a population of 20 thousand or more as cities and those with a population between 2 and 20 thousand as towns.

Density refers to the average number of people living in a given area.

The elements of the urban form include the following;

• Urban settlement form and types of buildings and spatial locations,
• Transport network and other urban infrastructure,
• Public open spaces and parks,
• Space and urban land use,
• Physical size and scale,
• Density.

According to the UN, “Urbanization determines the spatial distribution of the world’s population and is one of the four demographic mega-trends, with the growth of the global population, population aging, and international migration”

This category emphasizes that urban facilities and services make cities attractive to rural populations such as high living standards and availability of urban amenities and services, job opportunities, higher education, and health facilities.

Urbanization is a complex socio-economic process of concentration of diverse population and human interactions in urban areas, leading to a rise in the number, land, and population of cities, in the division of labor and specialization, and in the emergence of urban-specific changes in human behavior, norms, lifestyles and relations.

Urbanization has five main aspects:

• Economic aspects
• Physical or spatial dimensions
• Population or demographic aspects
• Political and administrative aspects (such as a change in voting behaviors of city dwellers and establishment of municipal and governance bodies)
• Social, cultural and physiological (urbanism) aspects.

The main indicators of urbanization can be listed as below;

• Agglomeration of economic activities
• Increased occupational diversity and specialization
• High engagement in non-agricultural production for the market
• Establishment of civic, political, and administrative organizations
• Increased population density and diversity and human interaction
• Increased number of cities, urban dispersion, city size, and population
• Diverse social relations, value systems, urban lifestyle, and subcultures
• Provision of basic urban services such as public transport, sanitation, water, and housing

Urbanization includes urbanism. Urbanism is related to social life in urban areas. Urbanism involves social and cultural aspects of city life, diversification of lifestyles and subcultures, differentiation in social relations and interaction, tolerance, participation, complex civic activities, and organization.

Some basic features of urbanism are as follows:

• Changes in the perception of time and space
• Increased importance of education and training
• Empowered socioeconomic position of women
• Differentiation in social relations and value system
• Increased importance of secondary and tertiary relationships
• Diversification and heterogenization of social structure and culture
• Rise in the levels of organization, division of labor, and specialization
• Decreased importance of primary relations such as family and community relations.

A list of the problems caused by overurbanization could be listed as follows:

• Pressure on limited resources such as land, water, employment, etc.
• Development of squatter housing areas (slums or ghettos)
• Social and spatial segregation and exclusion
• Environmental problems and pollution
• Hidden or open unemployment
• Increased crime rates
• Traffic congestion
• Urban poverty
• Urban sprawl
• Epidemics

Suburbs are new urban districts outside city centers consisting of detached houses or low-density apartments.

Urbanization in Türkiye is generally supported because of its contribution to economic growth.

The total population of Türkiye, which was 73.7 million in 2010, reached 83.5 million in 2020, and 77.5

million people (93%) live in urban areas today

Urban governance is the process of negotiating the problems of an urban community or the whole city with the participation of relevant actors, using political, social, economic and managerial influence and power. Local governments and citizens are to interact for good governance at the city level.

The most important public actor in urban governance is municipalities established in towns, cities and urban areas to produce services to meet local common needs.

Urban policy is simply related to why and how the state (central and/or urban governments and their units) and non-state actors intervene in city space and life by formulating, implementing, and monitoring policies.  It is necessary to adopt a specific urban policy perspective to understand the city, urban life, urban governance, and urban policy-making process.

The policy process goes through the stages of bringing the problem to the agenda and defining it, determining the policy choices, formulating and adapting a policy among these choices, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating the adapted policy and finally deciding on its continuation, change or termination