The intervention, which was carried out in cooperation with Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IMM) and Arup, within the framework of the Global Future Cities Programme supported by UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), aims to improve the capacity of local governments through next generation methods in urban planning practices and to increase cooperation within the institution. The study involves different units of IMM related to planning to actualize multi-stakeholder processes and aims to reach large segments of the society and city residents who benefit from the services of local governments by increasing awareness and technical capacity in this field.
Within the scope of this intervention, it was also focused on creating a long-term vision for the first "Urban Observatory Unit" for Istanbul, which grounded on city’s conditions and resources and met the international quality standards. It was principally accepted that the observatory should allow citizen engagement in city planning processes with correctly coordinated data to achieve better performance in sustainable urban development. This was an attempt for a next generation participation model in “city planning practices” that involves all stakeholders and underrepresented groups based on an innovative, integrated, inclusive and long-term institutionalization approach. The model was built on sustainability principles for the city in a way that improves social inclusion and decision-making processes in urban planning practices of Istanbul.
The Task Force, which was established among the IMM Units on City Planning for the first time, and aimed to speed up the cooperation between units and support Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, which is a large organization to overcome the coordination problems more easily.
By accepting the principle of transparency as a key component within the corporate strategic plan, online participation meetings were organized with stakeholders involving civil society, professional chambers, private sector, local government and academicians in order to design a stronger stakeholder engagement in compliance with the strategic Open Management vision of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. After the analysis of the data from the workshops, best practices and various participatory methods and tools were examined, processed and tailored based on gender equality and social inclusion criteria, a “Participatory Methods and Tools Guideline" was created specific to Istanbul.
Throughout the delivered reports, the current situation has been analysed, the participatory planning framework and methods have been determined, the selected participatory methods have been defined, monitoring and evaluation methods have been partially determined, and finally, a test was planned in the pilot project.
Meanwhile, the first steps were taken for capacity development activities on governance and inter-unit coordination and city network studies initiated with peer institutions. The specific outputs created for this intervention, such as participatory framework and method cards, are ready-to-use tools that can be used to promote inclusiveness in urban planning practices. They can easily be used in cities and programs that need other capacity development in order to disseminate knowledge and recognize good practices.
Participatory Urban Planning Implementation Model, Training and Capacity Development Programme for Istanbul aims to build capacity in participatory and inclusive urban planning activities of the local government and increase cooperation within the institution through new-generation methods.