Landscape Urbanism for the Living: Istanbul's Golden Horn

Abstract

Today, it has been learned by experience that physical environments designed/planned with only human focus only can not create resilient cities and overcome ecological destruction. This article is about a series of strategies developed for Habitat Halic Project for Istanbul's Golden Horn to create a habitable environment for all living things. The biodiversity brought to Istanbul by the Golden Horn geographical system is one of the main reasons why Istanbul has been the capital of civilisations. The shallow waters of the estuary that meet the Bosphorus have the potential to offer a unique habitat for the flora and fauna. However, with the effect of environmental pollution on water, the currents and flows have been lost. The Golden Horn, which turned into an industrial port in the period when the industrialisation process of the Ottoman Empire was most intense in the 19th century, continued its function in the 20th century as the most important industrial zone of Istanbul within the Prost's Master Plan for the city in 1936. The implementation of the master plan accelerated the pollution of the Golden Horn waters. Several rehabilitation projects, including recent ones failed to create a sustainable ecological environment. The Halic Project put forward a set of systems aimed at restoring the bird and fish fauna and aquatic vegetation that existed in the Golden Horn waters of the Istanbul Golden Horn until a century ago, and to develop a potential ecosystem of the Golden Horn. The project proposes macro and micro ecosystems for the recovery of biodiversity by using the potential of the Golden Horn to transform the area into a landscape infrastructure with ecological interventions. It offers strategies for improving the water and increasing biodiversity by adding new factors through the niches of existing species in the estuary ecosystem.