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.

A Short History of "The Land of Mine" // Blog'a Yeni bir Soluk

This blog was created in 2013 as an on-site summer course blog. The summer course was undertaken in Zonguldak, serving as an urban laboratory to observe context-specific aspects of urban shrinkage and throw into sharp relief the phenomenon of urban shrinkage in urban planning curriculum in Turkey.

Since then I've been involved in international research projects on urban shrinkage, Zonguldak being a case study in the most recent one; and my teaching activities continue out of the university's institutional setting.

So I decided to breathe new life into the blog and turn it into a place for highlighting my research, teaching and other activities to reach out to an audience beyond academia. I also aim to use the blog to share information about and discuss important contemporary issues in the fields of economic geography, urban geography, and planning which are my principle areas of research and teaching.

Hence the "Land of Mine" is both a reference to Zonguldak-a land of coal mining-which laid in the centre of posts shared earlier in this blog  and to the platform I aim to use to reach to a wider audience.

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Bu blog 2013 yılında bir yaz stajı ve stajı takiben yürütücülüğünü yaptığım kent planlama stüdyolarının ders blogu olarak oluşturulmuştu. Zonguldak, bu çalışmalarda bir kent laboratuarı olarak yer almış, kentsel büzülme olgusunun Zonguldak bağlamında araştırılmasına ve kentsel kent planlama stüdyolarının gündemine taşınmasına aracı olmuştu. Blog'un ismi "iytefieldcoursezonguldak" idi.

Zaman içinde bazı gelişmeler oldu. Zonguldak, bir ERA-NET projesi çerçevesinde yürüttüğüm çalışmalarda laboratuar olmaya, ders verme faaliyetlerim ise üniversitenin kurumsal ortamının dışında devam ediyor. Bu gelişmeler, 2013 yılında oluşturduğum bu blogu yeniden düşünmeme vesile oldu. Böylece bloga yeni bir soluk getirmeye karar verdim.

Kurulduğunda blog playlaşımlarımın odağında yer alan Zonguldak'a da atıfla ismini "Land of Mine" olarak güncellediğim bu blogu bundan böyle hem kendi çalışmalarımla ilgili, hem de kendi ilgi alanlarım olan ekonomik coğrafya, kent coğrafyası ve planlama alanlarında gündeme gelen konularla ilgili paylaşımlarda bulunacağım, herkese açık bir platform olarak kurgulayacağım.