Turkish Land Readjustment: Good Practice in Urban Development

Abstract

Urban populations in Turkey have been growing steadily since the 1950s. As such, adequately supplying development parcels for the growing population is one of the most important responsibilities of the local governments, primarily by preparing and implementing development plans. The tools most widely used in this implementation include expropriation, voluntary application and land readjustment (LR). LR provides efficient implementations both for government and landowners when compared to expropriation and voluntary application. However, Turkish LR bears a number of weaknesses that must be addressed in order to facilitate widespread use. This paper discusses the importance of the LR method in implementation of the development plans in Turkey. Furthermore, it introduces Turkish LR method, including its primary principles and implementation phases. It concludes with the strengths and weaknesses of the method and such proposals as encouraging voluntary LR applications, providing landowners’ participation in the projects, carrying out the projects based on the value instead of the area, introducing legal sanctions to provide developments after the LR implementations, constructing a web-based platform to share the experiences gained in different projects, and using Geographical Information System technologies to improve overall implementation of the LR projects.