Public green space and disaster relief: The scope for effective policies in Istanbul

The study involves the role of public open space in disaster relief in relation to earthquake risk in Istanbul. Istanbul needs a credible disaster management plan, because the city lies on the North Anatolian fault and recent urban growth leads to greater risks. Further earthquakes are forecasted in the near future. The aim is to develop study of landscape management and sustainable urbanism to develop an in-depth understanding of how to create a city-scale landscape infrastructure of disaster evacuation parks across Istanbul for relief natural and other disasters particularly earthquake, and to propose how to effect such policies. A comparative evaluation of disaster mitigation studies in Japan, Greece and United States is conducted. Later the evaluation is interpreted to develop earthquake hazard mitigation criteria with landscape architecture perspective for Istanbul. The criteria are purposed for a neighbourhood in European side where the earthquake hazard is highly expected. Analysis plans helps to understand the safe refuge areas for neighbourhood scale. It is recommended that landscape architects and local governments engage in more pro-active land use planning and take more responsibility to make sure that hazard mitigation criteria are integrated into urban transformation projects.