Planning for Stress on Agricultural Lands: The Case of Çukurçayır in Trabzon
Great threats to the continuity of life on Earth are present these days. The migration of millions of people due to the climate change-induced disasters, droughts, hunger, and wars that have deepened the deterioration of natural and agricultural ecosystems is the inevitable result of human pressures on nature. The changes resulting from urban development have been reflected in urban spaces through regional- and/or local-scale spatial plans. The rapid growth of urban populations has increased the needs for food, drinking water, shelter, transportation, health, and recreation services, and these have caused stress on natural and cultural resources. This study focuses on the pressures from changing and diversifying land-use decisions regarding agricultural lands as a result of the demands of the growing urban population and aims to examine the spatial planning decisions made on a medium-scale settlement in Türkiye in order to reveal the interventions in agricultural areas these plans caused. The study examines the 1/5000 scale Revised Land-Use Plan (2013) and the 1/1000 scale Revised Implementation Plan for Çukurçayır Settlement (2013) in Trabzon Province. The findings reveal indirect interventions on agricultural lands in terms of transportation-public facility relationships, population-public facility relationships, and building density decisions as well as direct interventions on these lands by changing their category of agricultural quality in these plans.
Tarım Alanları Üzerindeki Planlama Baskısı: Trabzon-Çukurçayır Örneği
Günümüzde dünyada yaşamın devamı için büyük tehditler söz konusudur. Doğal ve tarımsal ekosistemdeki bozulmayı derinleştiren iklim değişikliği kaynaklı afetler, kuraklık, açlık ve savaşlar nedeniyle gerçekleşen milyonlarca insanın göçü insanoğlunun doğaya olan baskılarının kaçınılmaz sonucu olmuştur. Kentlerin gelişmesiyle yaşanan değişiklikler, kentsel mekana bölgesel ve/veya yerel ölçekteki mekansal planlar ile yansımaktadır. Hızla artan kentsel nüfus, gıda, içme suyu, barınak, ulaşım, sağlık ve rekreasyon hizmetlerine yönelik ihtiyaçları artırmakta ve bunlar da doğal ve kültürel kaynaklar üzerinde baskı yaratmaktadır. Bu çalışmada artan nüfusun talebiyle değişen ve çeşitlenen arazi kullanım kararlarının tarım alanları üzerindeki baskısı ele alınmaktadır. Amaç, Türkiye’de orta ölçekli bir yerleşme üzerinde verilen mekansal planlama kararlarının incelenmesi ve tarım alanlarına müdahalelerin bu planlar üzerinden ortaya koyulmasıdır. Trabzon ili Çukurçayır Yerleşimi 1/5000 ölçekli Revizyon Nazım ve 1/1000 ölçekli Revizyon Uygulama İmar Planları (2013) incelenmiştir. Sonuç olarak ulaşım-donatı ilişkisi, nüfus-donatı ilişkisi ve yapı yoğunluğu kararları kapsamında tarım arazilerine yapılan dolaylı müdahaleler ile bu planlarla niteliği değiştirilen tarım alanlarına yapılan doğrudan müdahaleler tespit edilmiştir.
Unplanned urbanization most often results in destructive consequences for cities. The main purpose of spatial planning, which is the activity of regulating space at different scales, is to ensure that urbanization is managed appropriately. In this way, spatial planning enables the sustainable use of resources for food, drinking water, shelter, transportation, health, and recreation for a growing population. However, the increase in populations worldwide, neoliberal state policies, and the ideals of branding cities in the era of globalization have caused planning decisions for medium-scale cities and even small settlements to become unstable. The literature this study reviewed implies the effects of these to have mostly been seen in natural areas and on agricultural lands. In cities where interventions on agricultural lands are intense, “livability” as one of the basic principles of planning is seen to decrease. These lands provide important ecosystem services such as fresh air and food security, as well as act as a buffer against environmental pollution. In order to regulate and make guiding decisions for agricultural lands that remain under pressure by existing between dense urban land uses, the current situation first needs to be demonstrated through the case of actual plans.
One of the most effective legal instruments in Türkiye after the 1950s was the authority granted to local governments for preparing, approving, and implementing planning activities in areas not restricted by special laws (e.g., tourism areas, urban transformation areas, and industrial areas) through Urban Planning Law No. 3194 that was enacted in 1985. The rapid population growth, especially after the 1950s, and the flow of populations from rural to urban areas caused planning to fall behind with regard to how cities were being shaped. As a result of neoliberal policies, the supply/demand for planning activities and road- and construction-oriented growth policies had increased, and cities began to develop rapidly due to the rising role of local governments by the 2000s until the centralization of their authorities in the following decade. Therefore, both local and central authorities adopted a process of increasing and distributing the urban rents on land. An accompanying legal tool for this process was ironically the Act of Soil Protection and Land Use, which was enacted in 2005.
This study investigates the impacts of these policies and processes and the complementary urban rent interest on agricultural lands in the urban peripheries regarding the spatial plans for a middle-scale settlement. To this end, the study examines the 1/5000 scale Revised LandUse Plan and 1/1000 scale Revised Implementation Plan for Çukurçayır Settlement in Trabzon Province, both of which were approved in 2013. This investigation involves a singular case study of the plans from 2013, leaving out the plans of the settlement that were approved in previous years. Three main reasons exist for choosing this settlement. First, the population of the settlement in 2014 (18,884) was found to be about six times larger compared to its population in 1995 (average annual population growth rate between 2007-2014 of 18.9% according to Turkish Statistical Institute’s [TurkStat] data on the Addressed-Based Population Registration System [ABPRS]), which is in contrast to the scarce land resources of the Black Sea Region’s geography where it is located. Secondly, in contrast to the east-west expansion of the city of Trabzon, Çukurçayır settlement, which was left to the domination of the construction sector, was demanded to expand to the south where agricultural lands are found engaged in hazelnut production, a specialty crop peculiar to the Black Sea Region. Thirdly, the settlement went through eight spatial planning processes between 1989 and 2013, approaching areas partially in the north and south or completely; according to the calculations made from the satellite images, the increase in the settlement area was found to have changed from about 4 hectares in 2002 to 135 hectares in 2022. As a result of the examination, the study has determined the building density of Çukurçayır to have increased gradually after 2008 by means of high floor area ratio (FAR) values and the corresponding housing and public facility requirements for the increasing population figures having been obtained from agricultural lands according to the 2013 plan. As of 2021, the population of this medium-scale settlement near the city center of Trabzon was 31,937 according to TurkStat’s (2021) ABPRS data. This means that at the time of this article’s writing, the population of the Çukurçayır neighborhood had exceeded those in thirteen of Trabzon’s districts, which are eighteen in total. This indicates a critical misguidance of this settlement in terms of spatial planning decisions.
Even if the methodology of the study should be implemented over the plans of a similar scale city anywhere else in Türkiye, the results are unlikely to differ as long as the approaches of the decision makers toward space remain the same. The scope of the study has been limited to the examination of a single settlement. Future studies can research more than one settlement in Trabzon or the settlements of a different city. Aside from studying the impacts of two-dimensional spatial plans on paper, in future, sociological research can be made regarding how planning decisions reflect on individuals, especially in the context of urban social structure. Another focus could be on researching the planning decisions for Çukurçayır between 2013 and 2022 using geographic information systems based on the current planning works that were approved after Trabzon gained the status of being a metropolitan municipality.
