Fostering Resilient Mining Towns

                 Photo: Coal Mine in Çatalağzı, Zonguldak. Own archive, 2014.

    There has been a massive wave of energy and mining investments all over the world linked to the growth of construction, infrastructure and manufacturing sectors. Worldwide production of raw materials such copper, iron, aluminium grew by more than 40% in just 10 years from 1995 to 2005 (Arboleda, 2016), accompanied by remarkable and continuous rise in commodity prices since 2000 and quick recovery after the 2008 financial crisis. 

    Energy and mining have also been high on the agenda of Turkey’s politics since 2002. Coal has a significant place in this agenda for stoking the country’s economy while at the same time decreasing its dependence on Russian gas (Carrington, 2015). With 38 coal plants in operation and 80 planned, the scale is jawdropping. 

    Despite this coal rush, however, Zonguldak-the coal town of the country which hosts the country’s first coal power plant opened 70 years ago-has been experiencing a process of deindustrialisation and urban shrinkage since the late 1980s. And like many other shrinking cities across the world, Zonguldak has been continuously prone to rapidly changing circumstances of the global economy. 

    So, what are the dynamics behind Zonguldak’s deindustrialisation and shrinkage? And what enables Zonguldak and cities alike to adapt, transform and thrive in the face of often dramatically changing conditions? These are the questions which guide my recent research that I undertake as part of an ERA-NET project entitled “3S RECIPE: Smart Shrinkage Solutions – Fostering Resilient Cities in Inner Peripheries of Europe”. We work together with urban practitioners and policy makers to identify a) what works in a shrinking city context, and b) how the underlying forces of urban shrinkage can be reversed in order to convert these cities into sustainable, liveable, and economically resilient urban environments. For further details see: http://jpi-urbaneurope.eu/project/3s-recipe/

Arboleda, M. (2016) Spaces of extraction, metropolitan explosions: Planetary urbanisation and the commodity boom in Latin America, IJURR, 40 (1): 96-112.

Carrington, D. (2015) Is it too late to stop Turkey's coal rush? https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/aug/06/is-it-too-late-to-stop-turkeys-coal-rush.