A DEBATE TOWARDS A SYNTHESIS OF RADICAL ECOLOGY AND SPATIAL PLANNING THEORIES

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Kentsel Politika Planlaması ve Yerel Yönetimler Anabilim Dalı, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2020

Tezin Dili: İngilizce

Öğrenci: BURAK ÖZGÜR

Danışman: Osman Balaban

Özet:

Environmental challenges faced at every scale in our age calls for global and local policy making and planning to take necessary measures to sustain the habitat we live in. Ecology is a major interdisciplinary science covering social and political spheres of these challenges and the role of planning is crucial on the existence and the remedy of ecological challenge. However, the knowledge gap between planning, ecology and environmental ethics, creates a contradiction of attitudes towards nature. This study is an attempt to provide insights to overcome this literature gap by rethinking planning from a radical ecology perspective and vice versa. The necessity of a radical ecology approach in planning derives from the urge to address and to counteract on the ecological challenge with its political and social dimensions. This study attempts to connect radical ecology theories and planning theories as well as providing examples of some environmental movement practices. To this end, relevant planning theories have been evaluated on their spatial approaches, and radical ecology theories have been introduced to lay a groundwork for further debate on how a radical ecology approach could be adopted as a tool to rethink the planning process. In order to give solidified examples of the theories, some environmental movements in Turkey are studied for further discussion to rethink planning with a radical ecology perspective. This study solidifies its efforts on evaluating and cross-referring radical ecology theories, planning theories and environmental movement experiences with their spatial significance. In this analysis, planning as a practice and institution, in theory, is focused on an alternative planning theory based on a radical ecology approach.