Urban Land Use Planning as a Tool of Enhancing Cultural Legitimacy on Climate Change: Case of Turkey

Abstract

While the problem of climate change directly interests persons and communities, the efforts to enhance cultural legitimacy on the problem still remains unsolved in our day. In this study, land use planning is regarded as a means to be used for enhancing cultural legitimacy on climate change, because land use planning has twofold implications: one in terms of leaving significant impacts upon climate change, and the other, with regard to scope of its activities that are of concern of persons and communities directly. For this reason, land use planning can be considered as a bridge between climate change and its cultural legitimacy. In order to achieve this, it becomes necessary to identify those social groups whose actions and daily activities are of particular importance for land use planning and climate change and the modes of relationships in between should further be defined. There are four groups associated with land use planning and climate change: municipalities, users, investors and land owners, and non-governmental organizations and professional chambers. Proposed suggestions for enhancing cultural legitimacy on climate change are formulated separately for these groups. These suggestions are elaborated in the case of Turkish legal mechanisms and the planning practice.