Capacity building program for urban regeneration: Theory into practice

This paper examines the progress of urban regeneration policies with reference to the Turkish context and a capacity building project experienced in the city of Istanbul. Following the 1999 Marmara earthquake, the Zeytinburnu District in Istanbul was assigned as the pilot area for urban regeneration according to the disaster preparedness policies of the Istanbul Earthquake Master Plan. Following this, the local municipality of Zeytinburnu was determined to demand knowledge and skills for urban regeneration practices. This paper focuses on local practices in comparison with some general trends: changes in local governance and urban regeneration, and the tendency to share out responsibilities through stakeholders via capacity building and physical, economic and legal arrangements, strategies developed with multi-stakeholders through sustainable urban regeneration, strategies for putting theory into practice for the implementation of built local knowledge. The aim of this paper is to reveal the outcomes on institutional and community capacity building in Zeytinburnu as a prior municipality of Istanbul in the means of urban regeneration, and to open a discussion on these outcomes. The paper highlights the importance of capacity building in the disaster preparedness process through outcomes of the Matra REGIMA Project that is in progress in Zeytinburnu Municipality.