Resilience thinking in high-rise clusters: the case of Bayraklı, İzmir

Abstract

This chapter highlights the importance of resilience thinking in the case of high-rise developments. Indeed, in the advent of natural disasters (e.g., earthquakes, hurricanes), health-related calamities (e.g., COVID-19), and adverse effects of global warming (e.g., sea-level rise, flooding), crisis mitigation becomes a sensitive issue for places that cluster masses of people such as high-rise districts. As such, the chapter offers a detailed account of the developments in Izmir, Turkey. It discusses four principles that shaped development of high-rises in İzmir including (1) sustainability and resilience, (2) quality of life, (3) participatory governance, and (4) innovation. Further, the chapter examines Bayraklı District, a high-rise district that has been recently (November 2020) hit by a 6.8-magnitude earthquake. The findings identify vital benchmarks to achieve more resilient high-rise, high-density areas in cities, including structural resilience of the buildings, provision of adequate open spaces, resilient infrastructure networks, the rapid institutional response from different levels of government and aid organization.