Urban restoration policies in the process of creating a resistant city
Authors: Tosun H. , Zengin E. , Pasha N. 
Published: June 2023

Deterioration in the urban area causes problems and difficulties such as irregular spread in urban space, insufficient infrastructure, environmental problems (air, water, soil, noise, odour pollution, urban heat island, etc.), low energy and resource efficiency, an urban agglomeration, lack of ecological space, security. Cities which are not built in harmony with the ecosystem will be vulnerable to possible disasters due to the deterioration. The main reason for these issues is the inability to maintain the balance between the urban and regional ecosystems, and to achieve urban sustainability, as a result, the weakening of urban resilience. For a resilient city, urban governance processes which promote sustainable innovation, preserve diversity, focus on modularity, restore ecological functions, tighten the decision cycle, build social capital and urban restoration planning which connects local and global scales are required. Urban resilience can often be regarded in the context of response to immediate impacts. However, the whole must be mastered by looking beyond the individual ailments. In order to make cities resilient; it is not only required to establish an organizational structure, to identify, understand and use of current and future risk scenarios and the processes required for action, to understand the economic impacts and the need to strengthen financial capacity for resilience, but also to turn towards flexible urban development and design, to protect natural buffers, to strengthen planning of understanding, prevention, mitigation, response and recovery, and community capacity, to increase infrastructure resilience, to provide an effective response, and rapid recovery and more rational renewal. Urban restoration is a kind of artificial intervention which aims to eliminate the destruction of the ecosystem in urban areas, allows the functioning city system to self-organize, supports the ecosystem repair capability, and follows a solution-oriented approach towards problems and targets. It is a set of systematic approaches that restore the city, which is exposed to ethical, ecological, and economic destruction. While resilient cities have a robust, reflective, redundant, welded, inclusive, integrated and flexible structure, they are also locations which have the capacity of maintaining the same function, structure, feedback and identity by absorbing disturbances such as a hazard or natural disaster and reorganizing itself as it is changing. Urban restoration constitutes the whole of practices that make it liveable by increasing the resilience of the city. Urban restoration practices are required to reach a sustainable city scale, which is at the common denominator of environmental, social and economic values, to provide welfare-oriented living space and standards, and to ensure the continuity of ecological resilience. Resilient cities breathe easier as restoration increases urban resilience. As long as the cities breathe, they stand, live, and keep it alive. In this study, the place and importance of urban restoration practices in the process of creating a resilient city in the solution of urban problems will be emphasized.