Urban Struggle: There is no other solution than 'Grab your toothbrush and come'

Urban transformation, which has been haunting our dreams in recent years.

Struggle.

We are struggling to transform. As if we are fighting. Don Quixote's battle against the windmills comes to mind.

How will we overcome this burden? The constantly changing rules are about to drive us crazy.

Questions and anxieties have become our nightmare.

Will my house get smaller?

Can we gain 1-2 more floors?

Is it possible to add a shop at the entrance?

Will I be able to renovate my house without spending any money? Anxieties like these are the biggest obstacles to transformation.

The principle that "property is the essence of life" takes precedence over the fear of being crushed under a column. Is dying suddenly by being crushed with your children or the "essence of life" the priority?

We cannot solve the problem of "urban struggle" without deciding on this.

Assuming we have decided. Let's say our first goal is "transformation".

Rental assistance that is well below current rates, a two-thirds or simple majority, the state covering a portion of the cost. Of course, these are all important incentives. However, the laws passed so far have unfortunately not provided the desired level of renewal. Because the number of our buildings that need to be renewed is expressed in the hundreds of thousands. According to some, it even exceeds a million.

We experienced the rural-to-urban migration movement that the modern world went through in the 1900s (after the industrial revolutions) after the 1960s. Unfortunately, our city administrators did not or could not intervene in time in the very rapid rural-to-urban population migration. The concerns about votes, especially during election periods, devastated our cities. It caused us to have unplanned and irregular cities. Following the occupation of shanty towns, as a result of the allegorical relationships of rogue developer-contractors with municipalities, many of our cities reached a state similar to Bangladesh. Our precious agricultural lands were violated.

Let's put aesthetic concerns aside for a moment. Concrete without cement (let's say little cement), low-quality iron, and manufacturing contrary to technique were of no concern to anyone until the 1999 earthquake. Until we lost thousands of our people under that rubble one night.

Just when we thought the engineering measures taken after the 1999 earthquake had solved our problems, the Maraş earthquake rubbed in our faces that we had made no progress. We ended up under the buildings for which we paid with the sustenance of our children. And we are dynamiting our damaged buildings with our own money again.

It means we haven't fully come to our senses. If we say "it is better to turn back from the loss at any point," the path we will take is clear.

The most important criterion is to believe that our buildings constructed before 2002, when the "New Earthquake Regulation" (which underwent dramatic changes and was subsequently continuously improved) came into effect, are not safe. Especially our buildings constructed in the 1970s-80s and even until the mid-1990s are completely unsafe.

Our ordinary citizens should know well that no building where "ready-mixed concrete" was not used is safe. They should not waste their money or time applying here and there to analyze this technically.

Once this is understood, let's move on to the second stage. They should stay away from rogue contractors in the market who come from backgrounds of grocery store management, butchery, or shepherding (every profession is of course very sacred—I am not belittling them). Ready-mixed concrete won't save you then either.

Let's come to the final stage.

Even though there is rental assistance, building "Mobile Guesthouses" with prepared infrastructure in areas designated by the state (close to their current addresses) would make our job easier to transform thousands of residences in a very short time. It is not easy to achieve success in the persuasion process without saving families whose homes are being transformed from the trouble of looking for new houses. (It is not really possible to find rental houses for this many families anyway.)

Existing household goods should be placed in warehouses under state control, and families should be placed in the state's mobile guesthouses by taking only their personal belongings such as toothbrushes. They should stay here free of charge until their homes are completed.

In this way, the residences of thousands of families can be transformed very quickly each year (without the trouble of looking for a rental house).

It is not possible for us to move to safe housing before the earthquake that is said to be coming soon without the number of residences to be transformed being expressed in the thousands at the same time.

It is clear that the cost of this model will be far below the approximately 100 billion dollar cost resulting from a new earthquake.

After my 30-year academic life, I cannot think of a better model. If anyone has one, let them tell me too.

Prof. Dr. Gökhan Arslan