Transfer of development rights for the effectiveness of the conservation plans: A case from Historic Kemeraltı, Izmir

Abstract

The “Cultural and Natural Asset Protection” law implemented the transfer of development rights as a new tool for land use planning and management incorporated in the heritage conservation of Turkey in 2004, but no substantive implementation has yet been developed. There is no question that the inclusion of the transfer right is a significant advantage by statute, but the design and execution of TDR needs a guideline, a model proposal. The objective of the study is therefore twofold: 1) to explore the potential and pitfalls of incorporating TDR to conserve heritage sites with a set of factors derived from existing literature and 2) to propose a model for creating and calculating TDR to achieve density limitation in built-up heritage sites.Based on empirical evidence and actual implementation of TDRs, some generic factors in the literature affect the success of TDR programs, particularly in the United States. We, therefore, decided to use a set of fundamental factors to fully evaluate the efficacy of TDR in the Turkish planning system. On the other hand, there is also a lack of research for a successful framework that uses TDR for heritage conservation in general in literature. This study aims to overcome all these shortcomings by making a general evaluation of the integration of TDR into to the planning systems, to show the intrinsic quality of heritage conservation and TDR potentials, and finally to provide a straightforward guide to a TDR model. Evidence indicates that while TDR provides the potential to preserve Kemeraltı’s cultural heritage as a new market-based instrument, its use should be carefully designed and regulated by public authorities, Izmir's municipality, and the community at all.