Research Information System
International AISU Congress, Palermo, Italy, 10 - 13 September 2025, (Unpublished)
Planning of Ankara in
the 20th Century: From a Garden City to a City of Garden Suburbs and
Satellite Settlements
The diffusion
of the city planning practice and models took place with the collaboration of
international experts and local actors in the 20th century.
Following the foundation of the Republic in Turkey, international experts of
city planning were invited to develop city plans in conformity with the
principles of the new “science of town building.”
A planning
competition was organized for the construction of the new capital Ankara in
1927. Three planners from France and Germany were invited to propose their
ideas for the future capital city. Hermann Jansen’s and Léon Jaussely’s
proposals both reflected a city planning understanding influenced by the Garden
City model, while they differed in their approach to the old town and the
representation of public spaces. Jaussely’s plan that reflected the traits of
French Beaux-Arts urbanism brought a zoning on the basis of neighborhood units
with different building typologies. He developed a “système des parcs” formed
of a network of green boulevards superposed on the transportation
infrastructure. Jansen proposed also a system of continuous green corridors -a
network of “freiflächen” that connected the neighborhood units destined to different
socio-economic groups. Finally, Jansen was given the commission to prepare the
development plans of Ankara. He planned the capital as a city of 300.000
inhabitants in conformity with the Garden City principles. Newly developed housing
areas were implemented in and around the planned city in the form of “garden
suburbs” with the help of cooperative organizations.
Jansen
prepared the plans of other cities, including Adana, Mersin, İzmit, in which he
also applied Garden City principles. The same principles were widely adopted by
Turkish architects and city planners, as a model for the planning of the new
development areas of many other cities in the country until 1950s. In the
second half of the century, while the existing garden suburbs were subject to a
rebuilding and densification process, new housing settlements were planned in
the peripheries of the major cities. In Ankara, Batıkent was planned as a settlement
that reflect ideas inspired from the New Towns movement in Great Britain.
Batıkent, which was implemented by a union of cooperatives is a satellite
settlement that houses 250.000 inhabitants today.
In the present
paper, the influence of ideas inspired from the Garden City movement in the
history of urbanization of Ankara is critically evaluated.